though i consider myself to be a resolute person of rational mind, i am a person that is occasionally blighted by intense paranoia; makes sense after spendin' a childhood with two parents who were both very often wracked with worry.
it has taken me a lifetime of arduous mental refinement to hone myself into who i am today and throw off most of the burden of paranoia and, given how much of a nervous child i was, i believe i have made leaps and bounds in terms of bettering myself
but... i do have moments where i falter, sad to say
last thursday was one of those times, an incredibly long night of doing battle against myself, a reckless onslaught by the dark side of the Khan that had been building up for some time now.
it was the usual sort of fare: are they actually your friends? what if you like them but they dont like you? what if youve let them down? what if you didnt meet their glowing expectation they had of you? what if you said something wrong? what if youre too crass, too vulgar? what if they think youre a simpleton because of that? what if youre ONLY a court jester to them, flat, 2 dimensional? what if this is all a ruse? what if they abandon you? what if they were never with you in the first place? what if you intimidate them? maybe youre a stones throw away from being forgotten? maybe, despite all your efforts, you still cant make a connection. maybe its ALL YOUR FAULT
hard to imagine, someone who most of my friends would say is so sure of himself being eaten alive by questions like this
i cant rightly explain it either, i usually have a strict policy about not lettin' bad thoughts through the front door because they will wreck your couch like Rick James in cowboy boots but, like i said, they caught me slippin'
i can normally keep a lid on things like this and head those bad thoughts off at the past, nip em in the bud, and all other sorts of adages but... they are slippery
deep down i knew it was coming; it was gettin' a little too easy to make jokes about mental health, a little too... comfortable with the idea that something was amiss. thats how they sneak in, slowly, carefully, bit by bit.
thursday night just happened to be when the levy broke
a shame really, i had the next day off and was lookin' forward to doin' somethin' that night; instead i sat around, locked in pitched combat with myself over hypotheticals of self-worth, sounds foolish in retrospect
there i sat, cross legged and sweatin', paranoid eyes flittering to and fro as the two sides of myself hurled constant insults, accusations, mantras, and ultimatums at one another, both taking and losing ground with each bit of verbiage
the true version of me spoke from a place of reasoning, assurance, and faith while the dark side spoke from insecurity, entitlement, anger, fear
every time the true side spoke, i felt allayed, slowly but surely, in spite of the raging torrent from the other side. it is a skill in itself to focus on the good lessons that we all know, deep down, are true and good for us in the midst of the noise and urgency that bad thoughts use as their weapon
the onslaught lasted the entire night; ive never had something like that happen before, being kept up by things of this nature
it may sound like the cliche guy thing to do but i even started liftin' weights. me, up at 430am lifting weights, while raging a mental battle against myself, pfft
i have made the joke in the past that guys use exercise to deal with mental stuff and... it seems i am living up to that stereotype.
for me, physical labor is one of the only things that makes me feel like im doin' something real. when i worked outdoors doin' manual labor for a living, that may have been the only time in my life where i felt truly 100% balls to the wall "cant nobody tell me shit" confident because i was doin' something that most people COULDNT do or didnt have the stones to do. and thats a big boost
i dont get quite the same feelin' since liftin' weights is not tied to my livelihood but it does help; i always say the struggle on the outside helps justify the struggle on the inside
plus, i didnt want the night to be a COMPLETE waste
it... helped. the strain in my muscles took away the agency of the negative thoughts and the inherent positivity of GAINS made me feel like i was doin' something constructive: takin' care of myself. it also tired me out enough to where i could fall asleep with the rising of the sun
when i awoke i felt... emancipated. the dark hold within my chest was gone and replaced with relief and reprieve. i was... slightly confused.
i didnt think i made any spectacular revelations the night before, i mostly just revisited and reinforced old lessons that have helped me for years now; i will illuminate three:
1. be a historian. you have to look at what people say and do as the forefront; anything else is speculation. dont get me wrong, im not sayin' to embrace naivete nor am i sayin' that some speculations arent correct but they are a gamble because they are unfounded. if you hang out with someone and they only say and do positive things, you have no real reason to doubt them as all evidence points to the positive. but of course, whether you believe them or not leads into the next point...
2. you have to give your people the benefit of the doubt, especially if the previous statements about them responding positively to you are true. this requires a person of strong faith and security to do as you are trusting that what the person is saying is true and you are trusting what you have done/said to them to not be offensive. a secondary component of this is trusting that they are good people and that you have good judgement; how would you feel if your friend came up to you and said "i know weve been hangin' out and gettin' along well but i just dont trust that youre a good person"? its basically sayin' your friend aint shit but unfounded, not such a great look, is it? plus it insults your ability to be a good judge of character as well as your securtiy in your faith in them. cuz if you cant even hold down the simple idea that your taste in people, your friends, arent shitty, how flimsy does that make you look? trust usually inspires trust and faith usually inspires faith; believing in someone is never a waste of time. this trust in another persons autonomy leads us into the last point...
3. you cant control other people. every single social interaction you have has to be understood as voluntary. this is a double edged sword that i, personally, think has a positive message. there are gonna be times where no matter what you do, what you say, or what you think, you will not be someones cup of tea. DONT FORCE IT. dont make yourself their cup of tea; you do a disservice to yourself by altering who you are for someone elses approval and to them by placating them with a sycophant at best or shackling them with a guilt-hostage at worst. if someone doesnt fw you, you let them go. think of the alternative, keeping hold of somebody simply because YOU want them with YOU; thats slavery. and slavery is illegal. it is much better for everybody involved to go their own way with their dignity and autonomy intact. now, goin' back to what i said about voluntary, i think its a positive thing to reflect on; after all, if every encounter is voluntary, that means each hangout you have means the other people WANTED to be there, they WANTED to interact with you again, they WANT to continue the bond youve established. i personally think thats better than a hostage situation.
all of these lessons are not new for me, the last one especially helped me during my last romantic entanglement, so... why did i feel so much reprieve?
maybe i just needed to hear them again. maybe i just needed to let the beast run wild and the hellfire wash over me just to rid myself of it. maybe i was just goin' through it
but thats the beauty of that phrase "goin' through it": it implies motion, a destination beyond the trials you feel now. you are not stuck and the things you feel now have an end date... but you gotta go through it
goin' through grief is very different than livin' in grief and its important we acknowledge the power in our words
there is a philosophy called hegelian dialectics that include three components: a concept, the thesis, the antagonist to the concept, the antithesis, and the remainder of these two clashing, the synthesis. i personally enjoy this particular school of thought as it includes compromise, the hashing out of ideas, and seein' what works and what doesnt, what fades and what remains of the two previous concepts. i feel like this is a good metaphor for what i went through thursday night, maybe i just had to let the two sides go at each other and restructure the results of their bout.
after all, what good is a belief system if it is not tested?
i am happy to say that, once again, my brilliant soul has shone out the brighter and overcame the darkness; it is a beautiful reminder of all of the work that ive put in to mold myself into who i am and it brings me great peace to know that there is always light shining in the dark