The Weight of Words

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When I’m at my most overwhelmed, I recede into the silence I am best at creating. I quiet the noise of expectations, real and imagined, by numbing the thoughts poking around in my most vulnerable spaces.

A couple of weeks ago in my conversation with Alison Cook, she said turning your mind off with the help of the remote or a scroll isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It only becomes unhealthy when you turn to those things trying to numb your thoughts instead of just quieting them. What I told myself was just a mental break –  a fill for the empty spaces – was becoming a sort of mental Novocain meant to numb all the feelings and thoughts that stacked on themselves until I felt buried.

Digging out is more about noticing than numbing. I had developed patterns. Routines. Moments of clarity chased away by memories of insignificance leading to the same start line I’ve found myself at over and over: Will I allow myself to believe what only I see or will I ask myself, instead, what if my vision is clouded by voices that were never meant to shape me?

You have these voices too, I bet. And I think it’s time we do something about it.