Thoughts, Patterns, Dilemmas

 I don't know what normal is; I don't think anyone does. There's a dictionary definition and a roomful of connotations, but what do they actually mean? What purpose does that word -- so often whispered behind hands and in morose circumstances -- actually serve? Normal. When you don't feel like you're it, the word seems to taste bitter, a slick of poison on the tongue. When you do feel like it describes you and your crowd, then you administer the poison, dolled out in pill-sized pieces of pain. But that's all melodramatic and dolled-up in pretty phrases. Really what I'm getting at is this: I'm not normal. I know that. In a lot of ways, deep in my genuine analyses of myself, I've always known that. So why does it sting so much now? 

COVID has given us all far too much time for reflection. For some people, perhaps that was a good thing. They could find new hobbies, discover their own feelings, and try new things. I've done the same thing, and in those ways, COVID has provided me with a lot of time to enjoy the small things in life. For that, I'm grateful. And yet, every coin has two sides. Flip this one over and you'll find that extended periods of time locked away inside, oftentimes with little interaction from others, has its adverse effects, especially on people who already struggle with mental health problems. 

You see, I never counted myself in that camp of people. I always assumed I was a generally happy person, and to an extent, I am. It really wasn't until last year that I realized that maybe my behaviors weren't entirely...well, normal. I'm a very thought- and emotion-driven person, enabled by my own feelings, intuition, and thinking. I push myself into things because of these feelings, and though they aren't always correct, I trust myself (maybe that's a fool's endeavor, but that's a topic for another time). In any case, my mindset of patterns drive this even further. I suppose thinking in patterns isn't a strictly uncommon way of looking at the world, but I back myself into corners with this mindset. If a loved one doesn't say something they usually do, I jump to the worst possible conclusion: they no longer care. On the opposite side of this, if I don't feel exactly the same feelings I did before in a similar circumstance, maybe I don't care anymore. It's a distressing and almost daily occurrence, because logically I know that emotions are constantly in flux and little changes rarely mean anything. However, sometimes I still get anxious and allow feelings to simply feel...wrong. Sometimes this leads me into days or weeks where I barely trust myself, and I get by, but it's difficult. Usually it's worse when I have too much time to dwell on things. 

I think myself into stress, and I'm sure there's some sort of term out there for that, but "normal" isn't it. I don't have a lot of insight into this topic, despite dealing with for my entire life, and for anyone else dealing with it, I don't have a lot of coping mechanisms to offer up, either. It's just been something that's been on my mind a lot lately. Ordinarily, I try to keep my blog posts upbeat and on the positive side of things, stitching a little light into even the worst times. After all, there's a lot to delight in when it comes to life, even amidst a pandemic. But this last little bit has been hard, because my mind has made it hard. Those times will pass, though, and I keep that in mind when the room seems a little too small and cramped. It's all I can do. 

Until then, I thought I'd add in a poem I wrote for my Honors class and read aloud for an oral history project that was meant to focus on an aspect of our life. It's about this very same thing, and it's called Knots. 

 “What I meant was--” "I was trying to say--” “I don’t know why I feel that way--”

But I do.

I once heard a man on the radio or news
describe anxious thoughts and
OCD tendencies as corridors and rooms
and alleyways to drive down and
explore their offshoots.
But they’re not.
Not to me anyway,
as much as I once thought that
the man on the radio or news or
blues station or whatever was right,
as much as my own mind envisioned
these once dimly lit mental images.
They’re just not.

A fisherman from birth,
it was upon the banks
of the river I frequent,
my line tied in loops
and whorls that mirrored
my sun-bit hands, that it hit
me what my own thoughts were like:
knots.

A palomar knot tied around a granny
with a loop into a uni,
or a lazily wound arduous arbor
cinching into an improved clinch
where sections of searing line
burn into my brain as my
fingers work methodically to
untie their messy hair.

I see my girlfriend with a
grand dress on at prom,
her eyes as bright as the mirror
of my oft visited river,
and tie a butterfly loop around her,
hanging a loose halyard around the
exposed curve,
before pulling over a snatch
of something a friend said--
“I really didn’t mean to hurt you; I just meant…”--

and sliding a slip knot onto a uni-to-uni and
conjoining the two snippets of life like
sentimental talismans.
The two mingle and stew,
and I add a dash of the past with
a highwayman’s hitch
and get an itch in my mind
and a stitch in my side.

There’s names to analyze
and dates to remember
and classes to pass
and worries of weight
and blasts from the past
that make my head ache,
all with their own strand of
fickle fishing line.

And there’s my fingers,

dutifully untying the knots

one-by-one --

and bleeding.