What goes up must come down
Spinning wheel got to go round
–Blood, Sweat and Tears/Spinning Wheel
Recently I was trying to describe how my brain works to someone whose brain is apparently much tidier than mine. My thought processes, I am sure you have noticed, are pretty disordered. I do well at work, where the type of work I do forces me into orderly thoughts. Outside of work, though, my thoughts are all over the place, especially at night when I’m trying to fall asleep. Or when I’m trying to write.
I thought I’d try a technique called automatic writing to illuminate the sad state of my thoughts. My typing isn’t nearly as fast as my thinking so it’s actually much worse. I could probably only get about half of my thoughtlets down.
It went something like this:
I wonder what I should write about. Tom Brokaw is irritating the cat is hurting my knee something about the way I think trimethoprim is on a regular schedule. More freezing rain? I can’t talk and write head aches I wonder about kissing it’s hard to type. Was that Tom Brokaw?
A few seconds later, I really don’t know where trimethoprim or Tom Brokaw came from. The TV is on, because Mark is watching the news, so they probably bled over from TV.
My head does ache, though.
This isn’t a very good representation though. Much of the time I have entire imaginary conversations that go on. Everything swirls around. I invent alternate endings to situations that will happen or that have already happened. I rehearse things I want to say. I have a lot of arguments. Sometimes I even really discuss the things I think about with the people I have thought them about. I think about vampires or incubi. Knitting. I imagine books in different scenarios.
At night, it gets to be hard to turn it off, especially if I am under stress about something. If I focus on something during the day, I can usually snap out of it. If I just notice the chaos and acknowledge it, sometimes I can pull out of it. If the thought chaos is persistent, sometimes I need to physically focus on something. I might touch my throat or forehead and just notice that sensation for a minute and then move on. Other times, I write about whatever weirdness seems to be the most insistent. Sometimes that means getting out of bed.
I am not fond of getting out of bed.
I am not fond of lying in bed with a thought storm going on, either.
Yes I could just keep my iPad or a notebook by the bed, smart ass. No one likes a smart ass, you know.