Am I a secret genius? The answer is probably 'yes.'

I struggle with anxiety and depression and a sinister form of ADHD which only appeared after the other two beasts had been beaten into a sort of submission. It's no great secret, really, and while I don't recall if I've mentioned this specifically in past updates, I think it's pretty obvious from the way I write.

For the most part, I acknowledge and understand that, and I try to reign myself in when I begin to go off of the deep end. But there are other times, times when I begin to obsess over a problem - or a potential problem, as the case usually is - and there's... there's nothing I can do about it. It's coming down the highway like a spastic caravan and I am powerless to stop it and the people who can stop it are drunk and high and oblivious to the danger and SMASH it's all over. I'm left standing on the sidelines, stooping to pick up the smoking wreckage the best I can while I drag along a leg which is all but useless now that it has eighteen pieces of shrapnel embedded into the bone.

It used to be easy for me to write this off as a manifestation of my ever-present anxiety and tendency towards pessimistic outcomes. The thing is, when I do talk to others about these situations, they agree with me! They agree with analyses and predictions. They just think I let it get to me too much.

Sometimes I have to talk to people uninvolved in whatever situation is going on to make sure I'm not crazy. Because sometimes.... sometimes you have to make sure you're not crazy. I know I have to, constantly. You raise a hypothetical and you give enough oblique facts to let the person make a somewhat-rational conclusion. Or you talk to someone who's close enough to the situation to see all the moving pieces but far enough away - eternally unlike myself - to be clear of the blast when it occurs. Then the other person agrees with you, as long as the 'you' in this case is actually me.

But they always give the same advice: don't let it affect you so much. It doesn't really involve you, don't let it get to you, try to just forget about it. You've done your best to minimize the damage from the impact and resulting multiple explosions, try to be content with that. They do understand why I can't do that, bless their hearts, but in a very general way.

I'll tell you the truth, reader: I think I might be a secret genius. Because - and I swear this is true - sometimes it seems like no one else can see the writing on the wall except me. Which, y'know, is insane, because it's so very clear, and at first blush I am not that intelligent. Yet here we are. When this happened when I was younger, I kept my mouth shut; I assumed that the adults knew what was going on and understood something I did not. It took several large disasters for me to realize that, no, they don't understand something I don't. They don't even understand a few things I do. With that realization came no power, however, and I was still born away on a mudslide of others' choreographed mistakes. Slippin' and slidin' all over creation.

Now, I'm a little older. Slightly wiser (?) and definitely slower, in absolutely every way. But I'm still running into the same old thing. I'm still seeing collisions before they appear. The left knee tweaks and the right eye twitches: a storm's on the way, an it's going to be a bad one. Those who know me, believe me. Those who don't, don't, and I pull and drag at their clothing and shout doomsday predictions to closed ears and vacant homes. They're standing in the fields, hands shading their eyes as they look out toward the sun, blind to the winds bullying them and the storm clouds above their shadows on the ground.

I don't know why I care so much. I try not to care so much. When I fail, I do my best. That should be good enough for me. But it doesn't prevent the tragedy, ever. So it isn't.

Trapped in a Mind send Help

This is kind of a companion piece to my last update, where I was talking about being trapped in my own head and how you can fall into certain cycles of thought. The reason I brought that up, in fact, was due to a conversation I had with my friend/roommate and my brother, where we were talking frankly (because that's the only way we talk, Frank) about the kinds of 'bizarre' mental habits we're afflicted by. It was an eye-opening conversation in a lot of ways. This kinda stuff comes up every so often tangentially, but usually not spoken about at length in such a way. I dunno, maybe you'll find it interesting.

My roommate, for example, has problems with social anxiety. Among the various ways this manifests itself, two stood out for me at the moment (I'm sure there are many more things he did not mention). For one, I've noticed - anyone who's spent time around him has noticed - that he has a tendency to curse or grumble seemingly at random. Asking him what's up leads to a noncommittal 'ugh, nothing' or something similar. It turns out, in fact, that these moments are frequently brought on by thoughts about mistakes he's made in the past - and not big, life-changing mistakes, but minor mistakes, often social in nature, going back months and years. The way he explained it, just remembering saying something that may have made him seem foolish, or a reaction to something that he wished he had controlled better, is enough to bring his mood down. And it happens a lot. It's a mode of thought that seems to be occurring near-constantly, and is (as he has described it) the kind of stuff that you or I may find completely unremarkable, forgotten almost immediately afterwards.

Similarly, my friend explained that he often second-guesses (and third-guesses, fourth-guesses, etc.) his reactions to people when caught off his guard. An interaction as simple as noticing a person you know walking down the hallway is what he used as an example. His initial instinct may be to nod to the person. Midway through the nod, though, he may grow concerned that the person won't notice the nod, so he'll also begin to wave. Then, as he's switched tack midstream, he'll sometimes attempt to smooth that jump over with a third action (for this example, perhaps a simple 'hey').

Once the person is past, though, he will then go through and repeat all the actions he just did in miniature; as he described it, "if someone could see the whole thirty-second interaction, they would see me nod, wave, say something, then as soon as the person was past nod again, make a little waving motion, and mumble under my breath. They would think I'm insane." He does this because he's going through every action and double-checking that they were all sufficient and/or not weird/creepy/etc.

These are two great examples of the patterns of thought we can get swept away by without even really noticing it. This stuff rises so subtly and over the course of our lives that by the time we take notice of it, it's already part of us. Which means it's really, really hard to let go of, and some people don't want to let go. Because it's normal to each of us, even though we may know logically that it's kinda strange and other people don't have the same exact issues.

My brother does something similar, where he'll sometimes obsess over an upcoming interaction with people, particularly if it's important. Which isn't so strange, I suppose, except he gets very, very concerned with it, and rehearses the way it might go ad nauseum so he's not thrown. Then, when it doesn't go exactly has he plotted it out in his head, he gets thrown off his game. Now, thankfully my brother is a suave enough guy (what can I say, it's in the genes) that this usually doesn't negatively impact him much in the long run, but it is something he's very concerned about.

He also has a very strong tendency to stress out over every possible decision. We make jokes about it, actually, because it is so prevalent and often involves decisions which are just not that big of a deal, objectively speaking. He gets so many points of view from so many different people that I begin to wonder exactly how helpful any of it can be, since he almost always gets a variety of different answers. He also often does this with decisions he's already made, maybe in the spur-of-the-moment.

Much like my roommate's social anxiety issues, I feel like most of us can sympathize with some form of this behavior. It's certainly not super bizarre, and I can say from personal experience that there are aspects of these thought patterns that I share - quite a few, in fact. Because I think most of us have social anxiety to some extent, and regret decisions we may have made, and moments we reacted without thinking and wish we could take it back. God knows I do.

Speaking of myself - my favorite topic, obviously - I'll go into some more specifics, if anyone's still reading, since I'm something of an authority on the subject. I also feel a lot more comfortable sharing details about the way I think versus other people, and then judging myself accordingly.

For one, I talk to myself constantly. CONSTANTLY. When I'm alone I sound like a raving lunatic. I'll hold one-sided arguments, go through past decisions, reevaluate current plans, all of it audible to anyone with a wiretap inside my apartment (or wherever I may be). It's just the way I think things through. I mean really think things through. I have a massive tendency to go off onto tangent after tangent after tangent - now realizing this may have been an ever-present symptom of my ADHD - while speaking, and this is magnified about a thousand times worse when it's just in my head. I find it VERY difficult to think in a straight line for an extended period of time (2-3+ minutes) keeping it all up in the ol' noodle. I also often find myself thinking faster than I'm capable of processing information. Does that make sense to anyone?

Have you ever had racing thoughts? Due to a bad trip or drug reaction, or overwhelming stress or something like that? I have. Boy oh boy, that was a bad two days. If you're fortunate enough to never have experienced this, the best way I can describe it is... it's like tripping over your own thoughts. You begin thinking very, very quickly, and the problem is that they're frequently disjointed thoughts connected by only the barest thread - because by the time you're about to formulate a singular notion, you've already jumped onto three more thoughts springing from that idea, and it goes on and on like a runaway train. It is awful.

That's not how it is for me most of the time, however; or should I say, it's an extremely minor version of that very awful experience. How often do you forget what you were about to say? That's essentially what it's like - a thought was fully formed, ready to come out, but somewhere on its way out of the mouth it gets lost. Sometimes you track it down and bring it home, and sometimes it freezes to death in the woods and is eaten by raccoons. Thought-raccoons, I mean. They might stand for, ah... no, I'm not going to waste your time by trying to make this into an extended metaphor, because that would be a real shitshow.

However, when I talk to myself, it forces every part of my brain to hold on a minute. Translating the thoughts into words and then speaking of them is so much less efficient that it slows the whole process down, and in turn allows me to focus better on one idea for longer. Do I still get distracted and forget what I was talking/thinking about? Yes, yes I do. But by processing my thoughts that way, and then hearing myself speak them, I'm able to pick up where I left off soooooo much more often.

This brings me back to my last update, where I was talking about being alone trapped inside my head. One of the reasons I have always valued solitude is that it has provided me with that very opportunity to think things through more clearly. Which is extremely important for me. However, much like my brother and roommate, what may seem normal (and even useful) to me when used in moderation becomes a sort-of nightmare when left unchecked.

Because I will just keep talking. Sometimes I'll be watching a show/movie or listening to music while alone and I will pause whatever it is just because I feel the need to talk. Talk talk talk. Talk some more. And a lot of times, I'm dealing with issues I have already dealt with. They're already done! I will not have received any new information, and often will have already made a decision (if I haven't already put said decision into effect). It's just a retread of what I've thought about before. I have the same arguments with myself, come up with the same solutions, and in general just repeat myself. Over and over and over again. Depending on what I'm thinking about, I can do this for weeks or months - and a few times, for years. YEARS! Of having the same exact conversation with myself.

Taking self-inventory is important, and I feel like I spend a lot of time in introspection. And this process helps me with that, and that's super-great. But once it begins to seem obsessive to me, it becomes something I want to turn off. But I can't. It's always there, and I know it's an exercise in futility and it actually takes up a fair amount of my time, and I want to stop it. But I can't. It's extremely frustrating. I can squash it if I put my mind to it, but it always creeps back in. I'll realize I'm mumbling to myself while walking to class or washing my hands in the bathroom at work, and ffffffff I mean it's just real annoying. Real, real annoying.

Now I don't know if you've seen the link between all these worthless ramblings, but it's basically 'uselessness.' Or futility, I suppose, or whatever you might call it. It's about how your mind can take things that are, more-or-less, healthy and/or helpful - asking those you respect for input/advice, taking care of how you come across to others, giving yourself time to think matters through - and turn them into crutches, and eventually labyrinths. Run through the maze, mouse. It's the same maze every time, and we all know that, but we also know that you're still going to run through it.

On a more uplifting note, however, my point is that we all have these kinds of things. At least, this small sample size does, but I would be highly surprised if most everyone didn't have certain mental prisons they've constructed for themselves. I don't get trapped inside my head the same way my roommate does, or my brother does, or you do. But we all do get trapped up there sometimes, and it can make us feel a little crazy. And frustrated, and useless, and just bad. Bad bad bad. Sometimes we might ask other people if they ever feel the way we do, and if they say no we go 'heh alright nevermind' and drop it.

But while the people you ask may not know exactly what the dimensions of your cell is, or the material the bars are made of, or how many excrement buckets there are (are there excrement buckets? Did you luck out enough to get a functional toilet? You are literally killing me here), I can bet with a good deal of confidence that they have their own prison. Maybe you even know about it. One of them, at least. You now know about one of mine, but the mind is dark and full of terrors. There is plenty of space for a whole Panopticon in there.


I'm thinking I should start breaking these walls of text up with pictures. What do you think. Would that help with the boredom?

Masks, Performance, and Your Own Thoughts

I was speaking with my brother and Jared - my ancient friend/current roommate - the other day about thought patterns, and the odd things we each do when trapped inside our own minds. I'll go into that later in the next post, because I think it might provide an interesting look into the workings of minds that may (or may not be) similar to your own, but for now I wanted to make just a quick update about being alone vs. being around others.

My computer ate it a week or two ago, and my campadre Enoch was kind enough to let me borrow his Macbook Air while I waited for my other amigo Justin to send me his old computer. I received it a while ago, but I still haven't taken any steps to transplant the guts from the old to the new. Which you could blame on sheer laziness - certainly that's a major part - but is more a factor, I think, of the way I feel. And think, I guess.

To really get what I'm talking about you have to know the way our apartment is set up. In the very beginning, we Chose (odds/evens) to see who got the bedroom and who got the living room (essentially the second, less private bedroom). I won, because very rarely that happens, and so I have set up shop in the bedroom. Jared is out in the living room, living things up as it were, and has arranged the couches and things to be very conducive to lounging. And watching shows/movies on his monitor, of course.

Beginning this past winter, when I picked up a WiiU, I have found myself spending more and more of my time out in the living room. I even picked up a Vita so I could keep the good times rolling. And bleed even more money, of course. Now that I'm completely mobile, I essentially spend all my time out there, and only use my room for sleeping and occasionally making blanket forts.

This has been a pretty stressful semester for me, and the last few weeks in particular have found me wound pretty tight. And, finally tying this back in with the beginning of the post, I have a tendency to live in an echo chamber; that is, a place where my thoughts echo back and forth (a metaphor I drew on for a previous blog update) without really being solved or worked through. They just resound.

It's frustrating, if I'm honest, to be stuck thinking about things you've already thought about and have, more-or-less, come to a conclusion on (or the best conclusion you can, given the state of affairs). And it cycles over and over, and I almost always find myself talking to myself to keep my thoughts straight - because if I don't, I lose my thread of thought every fifteen seconds or so - and even that is difficult to keep straight and rational. Whoa, I guess I really might have ADHD. Damn you psychiatrists...!

The end result being, when I'm alone in a smaller room, my thoughts tend to get louder. They fill up the physical space, if you'll permit me yet another metaphor, and the smaller the space and the fewer people around to fill up that space with their thoughts, the more mine take control. And so I've found recently that my room, which is pretty comfortable and set up by me for me, including the heaped clutter covering every square meter, has become a space for gloom and depression. It's almost stifling, really. But something as simple as transitioning to the living room - a trip of about fifteen steps - lightens my mood significantly.

Granted, it's still not all sunshine-roses and water-daisies (?) when I'm here alone, because while being in a larger space makes me feel better, I'm still alone with my thoughts, and with no one else present they can be given a voice as much as they wish. And then I feel like a crazy person babbling to myself for forty minutes straight!

Which is why I'm actually quite thankful that I don't live alone. I mean, I always figured that I would love to live by myself - and that's true, in many, many ways. But for right now, at least, that's not my deal. Even if the thoughts filling the room when you're spending time with someone else are dark and depressing (sorry for putting you on blast here Jared), it's their darkness, and their depressing, which is a different enough shade from your own that it helps take up some space. I think this extends to whenever you spend time with another person, and I mean spending real time, not fake faux-friendly 'let's watch something and crack jokes and then leave' time that so many "friends" engage in. Which is fun in its own way, to be sure, but at least for me, when I'm feeling down, I don't have the energy to put on that mask. The performance just becomes less important to me.

So, yes. There you go. Having people who know you, who you can really talk to and be comfortable around, is absolutely awesome when you're dealing with some miserable shit. You don't have to talk to them; you can do literally what I mentioned in the last paragraph, and watch shit with them and crack jokes. But the important part is that you don't have to keep up the mask, because at some point you can't maintain the performance any longer and if you don't have anyone you can let it down around, you turn inwards and isolate yourself. Then it's just you and your thoughts, and that can be a bad combination.