I intend to get myself inked with this brilliant phrase, ‘chaos reigns here’!!!
Why? There are tons of reasons, but I am going to list just a few to give you a clear picture of what it’s like to be me. It wasn’t easy to label myself a mess, basically a disaster waiting to happen any second.How does one become a stress magnate? A worry machine? A problem attracting entity?
Easy! Let your thoughts run wild and race down the rabbit hole faster than Alice in Wonderland. Let there be a link in your thoughts and never allow the chain of thoughts to break away from the parent thought. It must always remain a continuous thread, a few knots being an exception but no breaks whatsoever.
Imagine the scenario in the mind of an overactive and dramatic being. The milk man delivers milk at 5.30 a m daily. One day, he doesn’t come till 7 a m what does a sane and normal person do? He/she makes a note in the diary and gets milk from the neighbourhood shop for one day. What does our person do? Speculates why the milk man hasn’t come. What could be the reason for his absence?
Maybe the man met with an accident. Maybe he ran out of petrol and is stranded by the side of the road, waiting for help. What if he had to go out of town due to an emergency at home? What happened there?… These baseless and unfounded scenarios take up valuable space in her head and prevent the sane and logical thoughts from entering her mind.
‘Chaos reigns here’ is made for her. She thrives on the cluttered confusion and disorganised drama. Some days, she wakes up happy and content but digs deep in her mind for a sliver of stress causing situation to feel normal. Happiness scares the living daylights out of her.
The phone rings at midnight, and it must be bad news. The kids not yet home from a party. They must have been kidnapped or met with an accident. A headache must be brain tumour and a cough, Covid.
The passwords for everything important are meticulously jotted down in her trusted diary but never updated in the same one. The day Wi-Fi is down or the cctv is acting up, she proudly brings out her all-important diary and gives you the passwords. Here’s the catch, they are wrong because they are outdated. The revised ones are in her nightstand drawer in her dream journal. The list is endless.
There is a method to her madness that only she understands. Onlookers feel she is lost and swimming in circles amidst her cluttered up desk, room and mind but she knows her way around it all even though the road map is tucked away somewhere safe. She will find it eventually. Have faith in her abilities and memory recall. The thing with memories is that they come and go through the mind at will, and where there is a will, there is a way. A way out of the mess and chaos.
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My goodness Sulekha it’s like you are me and I am you and you know exactly what goes on in my head. Except the passwords – which are in one place, mostly, I think. Overthinking, worrying, waiting for a catastrophe to happen — sometimes I’m not even aware how stressed I am. The antidote, at least what works for me, is keeping myself busy. Reading is an escape – a good thriller for instance keeps all other thoughts at bay.
Haha…Like I said to another blogger friend yesterday that, ‘great minds think alike’. I used to think I was the only one going through so much stress. Thanks for making me feel normal :). Your suggestions look good, might try some.
Loved your post, Sulekha! I had a good laugh and at the same time I must say I can relate to this very well, too! I do have days when situations drive me downhill very fast, and I’m exactly as you describe…worry becomes me, that is! I think those of us who carry trauma within us are more prone to such worries and anxieties…What I really loved about the post is how you say that there is a method to the madness which of course you know best and that is what matters, right?
Keep writing and sharing more often, Sulekha!