The one where the silence decided to speak
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I wasn’t going to post this as it wasn’t a part of the plan; I had an entirely different post planned for this week. What I write or don’t write depends entirely on what I am feeling at that particular moment and what we feel can change in a matter of a second.
Though we may be the most intelligent species on the planet our existence is tied to the whims of fickle sentiments. At the drop of a hat, we are happy, sad, in love, and out of it. We can go from wanting peace to waging wars within a day. We are the only kind whose silence says far more than words.
I don’t know where I am going with this one, just that for once I am typing as I am thinking. So, it isn’t some planned article, more so an ordered form of my brain’s threads. We all carry a jumble of thoughts as we walk around every day, each sectioned off and prioritized based on how much it affects us. Our mood usually reflects the section with the highest priority. Today I am trying to make sense of the jumble of thoughts inside my head and put it to paper, I am not sure what it’ll achieve but at least I can organize the chaos and maybe you can find something that reflects you in there too.
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Tablespoons Of Anxiety
No one wants to get up in the morning and obsessively work but sometimes we can’t help it. When I try to explain to people why I cannot take leave or why I am staying back late, they rarely understand. It’s not that I want to, I have to. The thought of not working or doing something sends my brain into a spiral that I cannot come out of. A little voice wakes up in my head and begins whispering:
“Something is missing, you didn’t do it.”
“You are forgetting something.”
“We could have done it better.”
I won’t disagree that yes, I can delegate but then my anxiety takes a different turn where I spend hours thinking how I could have executed that task better or fretting that something has gone wrong. It takes me hours to reconcile myself that yes, we can trust others to work alongside us too.
And God forbid there be a day where I have nothing to do because then that day ends with me being curled up in a foetal position feeling guilty that I have done nothing all day and then panicking about all the things I could have done.
The worst part is should I even do everything planned for that day; I still feel anxious that I have left something out. So, there is no peace. My mind simply spirals in this manner until it’s exhausted and I fall asleep.
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1 Drop of Frustration
Remember those days when we feel angry and there is no particular reason for it? You are not alone; I too have a section assigned in my brain for those days. It could be something small or something earth-shatteringly big, but it manages to set us off.
For me, it usually begins with me opening my eyes and being immediately irritated with my surroundings and spending the rest of my day wanting to yell at everyone and everything in my immediate vicinity.
This is topped off by me being unnecessarily rude at times to the people in my immediate vicinity; they might have done absolutely nothing to earn my ire upon them but my frustration boils over to them and I feel awful for hours afterward.
I try, I try so hard to just keep to myself on those days, it’s hard to control your tongue when your brain is running in circles. On these days I spend most of my time curled under my blanket trying to painstakingly unwind all the crossed wires in my head.
The people closest to me are the ones who notice my self-imposed exile first, it does frustrate them, my silence and I do want to tell them all that has gone wrong but the thought of hurting them inadvertently holds me back.
I’d take my silence over theirs any day.
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A Pinch Of Tear And Trauma
We all have from tiny demons to big monsters crawling under our bed and sometimes they manage to crawl into our heads and those are the moments when something gives up a little inside us. It isn’t that we aren’t strong enough, it’s just that even the strongest of us need a moment to break down a little bit.
And that’s what I do on these days, have a series of tiny breakdowns and feel exhausted at the end of the day. Sometimes all I can manage to do at the end of the day is crawl into bed and enter hibernation mode.
Crying helps, honestly, it’s like a quick reset where I get to remove my frustration with emotions. A small incident might have kickstarted it by toppling over all my triggers one after the other like a domino effect, but I cannot visibly respond to it if I don’t go through that cycle of breakdown. It stays there like a heavy weight on my shoulders.
The worst-case scenario is when this happens when I am outside and I don’t know how to deal with it, I spend the entire day smiling woodenly until I can hear an audible shatter within me and I have to excuse myself, if only for a moment. And if I put it off for a long while, it takes me that much longer to recover. I become numb, frozen almost; my body goes through the motions but somehow, I feel detached.
Then it becomes harder to come back.
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We aren’t alone, we aren’t the only ones who are lost. It’s just that we chose to come back. I feel in a way everyone is a little bit clueless inside but the fear of not being the image of perfection holds them back from realizing it.
Who do we pretend for? And why does it matter?
The ones that we keep pretending for are flawed in their ways and they are so busy pretending themselves that they hardly notice us themselves, so why are we trying so hard then? It gets exhausting, playing a part continuously. Wouldn’t you rather just be yourself?
I try a lot, throughout the day, to wear a public-appropriate mask but it isn’t worth the effort; I’d rather find genuine faces among them and for that, we need to be ourselves first.
Painted porcelains crack easily anyways.
