Monologues to the Mind: On Overthinking

Everything inside my head spins sometimes. It spirals out of control so fast, my mouth starts to feel dry. The kind of dry you’d probably feel if you rubbed the inside of your mouth raw with sandpaper.

I tend to think a lot. I tend to not be able to stop seeing the silhouette of the letters. Spelling out how everything could go horribly wrong. I’ve turned every incident and every sentence over and over in my head. I’ve dissected every moment and picked apart every event that took place throughout my life. It’s a never-ending process.

And then there’s noise.

There’s noise all the time.

It took me a while to realize the noise was my own mind.

It took me a while to just let it be and to stop running away from it. Somehow, my mind always sprints faster. It catches up. Every time.

Human minds are the result of artists who are frustrated. They dip their brushes in chaos and splatter it onto canvases with their eyes closed tight in hopes of a miracle.  I think my mind clings to hopes too much for it’s own good. It creates masterpieces with strokes of violet, blue and splatters of green. Only to carelessly spill over a striking mixture of every shade of grey.

My mind is very careless. It trips over the memories it shabbily thrusts away, only to fall face first into nostalgia.

My mind has a lot of bruises.

It isn’t made of galaxies or universes. It doesn’t wade through a river of stars to thread constellations. My mind is made of chaos. Of the dull murmur of noise and, more often than not, the screaming and screeching of voices so loud it’s almost blinding.

It’s a train wreck sometimes.  I still haven’t quite figured out how to make it stop running. It runs too fast for my body to support it.

My mind is a little exhausting.

Despite all the calamity it creates, I prefer the noise it makes to the cacophony everyone else seems to enjoy. I can  easily spend hours alone with my mind.

Mending the bruises.

Putting away the grays of my mind.

Synchronizing our speed.

My mind makes a lot of noise. However, I’ve learned to stop running away from it

Because while noise is nasty, numbness is malevolent.

Edited by Viveca Shearin