Shifting Slowly

I went into work today.  Every time I go in I remember how much I miss working there. The kids make it extra special and fun just because they’re kids and their minds are so innocent. The things they say that they believe is so relevant makes you realize that half of what I think is relevant, is not.  I’d rather be thinking and saying out loud what they’re thinking and saying. Nothing is off the table with kids. They have constant word vomit and I love it. I wish I had more word vomit skills.

Instead, I tend to keep a lot of it in and it swirls around my head over and over until I spin it into a thousand other things that never had to do with the first thought I had. Why do our brains work this way? It’s super annoying but also understandable. I understand that if I don’t word vomit and spew it all over the place I can seriously do some major emotional damage to myself.  So I was taught that even though I don’t have to go around telling everyone exactly how I feel or how I see things that I can write it down and it works just the same. And it does.

Something about seeing your thoughts on paper makes it seem less daunting, less relevant and you can move on with your life. I have learned to do this in the last 3 years when so much shit was being stored into my head by me. I’d think something terrible, have a terrible dream, a terrible thought, have an opinion that differed from others and I’d let it ruminate for days, months and sometimes; years.  Then I learned the habit of writing it down. Most often I was so used to letting it ruminate that I thought, ‘no, even if I write it down, I’ll still think about it.’ And sometimes I would but to a lesser degree. Plus, I had to be brutally honest about what I was writing too. Because even though you think it and you’re already beating yourself up for thinking it and telling yourself that it can’t be possible that, that’s what you’re thinking.  Imagine then having to find words for your thoughts and having to see it on paper, that shit hits you like a bat to your face.  Now you’re seeing your thoughts on paper and you’re like, what the fuck?!  Most times the what the fuck turns into, seriously?  Like, seriously that’s what you were ruminating over? And usually, it goes away.  Amazing tools that paper and pen.

The hardest part I think is getting to the paper and pen. Convincing yourself enough to say, ‘enough now! Get your ass into a chair and write that shit out and let it go. Burn the paper if you have to afterward, but stop sitting there thinking your brain is going to somehow store it away for you and you’re not going to think about it.’  It’s the convincing part that gets in the way.

That’s often about a lot of things in life; diet, exercise, sleep, study…convincing yourself that you sometimes have to do what you don’t want to do or what doesn’t come easy in order to get to where you wanna go. Say that 5x fast.

So here I am, writing.  Writing it out for me to see. For me to convince myself that I am a writer, I am not the things I think in my head. I am not my thoughts. I am not this scared little girl afraid to leap off this building of self-doubt and launch herself into a million success stories.  I am not the girl I was last year, last month, yesterday or even an hour ago.  That is what I’m here doing, convincing myself.