Chain reaction

How my perfect mood sometimes abruptly stops is this - I notice someone looking at me sideways, or talking to me coldly, or touching me in the manner that doesn't feel pleasant - and, boom, I start wondering what is it that I did wrong. Not somebody else, no, me. What is it that I said, or missed, or did I hurt someone, or made a fatal mistake. I circle in my mind one scenario after another, and while doing so, I stop feeling and start analyzing. That makes me come across as cold or absent or in a subdued mood. Whoever I'm with, probably start wondering why all of a sudden I sulked. So they become more cautious in how they speak, perplexed, analyzing. Guess what, I notice that right away and feed off of it, diving deeper into the spiral of doubt. What are they thinking about me? What happened? How long ago did it happen? Did I upset them? Or were they upset with me before? What is it that I could have done differently?

I keep going down the drain, and at some point, if I don't catch myself and pull myself out, it's too late. I plunge into one of my dark moods - the world hates me, everybody is against me, they all think I did everything wrong, I owe every single one of them an apology, life will never be the same, nothing can be repaired now, I wrecked it all. I brood on it, and I shut down completely. So if you will try breaking to me at this point, good luck. I don't believe the good things you say about me, I can't take compliments, I don't trust your offerings to help, I only want one thing - burrow myself deeper, and never get out. Forget about light and air and freedom. Shrink to a non-existence, and then more. Disappear completely. Become so insignificant that nobody will ever remember me, or need me, or remember if they ever needed me at all. And the worse I can make this hell for myself, the better. I collapse onto myself, but I have to keep living, so I turn an autopilot mode on, and keep going. I have to. Like a machine. Last time I did it, it lasted nearly 4 years. Now I shudder, realizing it was me and only me responsible for this. I started catching myself mid-way, and sometimes at the very beginning, the second I feel the familiar slime on my feet, the temptation to give in and slide down, all the way down.

I notice now that whatever other people do, has nothing to do with me. They are struggling with their own moods as much as I do. The way they look at me has nothing to do with what I did - and I will never be able to guess what goes through their minds, as much as I might want to try. I notice I go so deep into analyzing every single detail of every single conversation I have, that I forget to simply enjoy it and dismiss the negative details - to not even think about them or try to see them - to stop watching out for the danger - because there is none. I don't have to watch out for signs of a comping catastrophe anymore. I can relax and be myself and know what whatever crosses my mind has to do with me and me only, and whatever crosses somebody else's mind has to do with them and them only. And we all can coexist. No need for chain reaction, no need to spiral down, to create a drama out of nothing, no need to make simple things complex, no need to project my own emotional poison onto others, or let their poison penetrate and control me. So I'm breaking it - breaking the chain. I consciously started stopping my eyes from sizing faces up and down, from searching the expression of the eyes or listening to the nuances of the voice tones, or catching every single body movement and thinking about its significance. Wait, not true, I still do all of the above, but I now realize why I do it and I know how to stop it. It took weeks in the past, then days, now it's hours, and I hope one day I won't have to do it at all. I will be rooted in being myself so much, that nothing will shake my stability, no matter what patterns I see, no matter how easily I read people. I'll just be me, and I will trust that it's ok to be me, and my perfect mood won't be broken. 

Photo by Demi-Brooke.