to my shoelaces

three - february 15th

After I'd been lying on my back for half an hour or so, I got up to be productive - do homework I didn't care about at all, read a book that didn't particularly appeal to me or eat something. Eating was always the easier choice, it wasn't boring, I couldn't fail at it or experience setbacks. But it wasn't like it was my favorite topic. It was very unproductive and I always felt like it had me tripping around the problem that was the bigger cause for my mental load. Actually, mostly, for the time I had, I played guitar. I was never particularly good at it, but it was just enough fun if I let all the other thoughts about stuff that irritated me pass. It wasn't easy at all, though. Stuff still irritated me. In fact, it always did. There was never much time for me to actually feel like I didn't need to have my guard up.

After some time, I decided to go on a walk to get my thoughts into a better order. If my head had been a closet, it would have run over with every new thought you tried to push into it, and then, if you had finally worked up the strength to close it properly, everything fell back out again the next time someone moved its door - followed by all the thoughts pushed in upon a previous visit. My thoughts were always overflowing my head and so, every once in a while, I went outside for a walk to clear up some space for new thoughts. In a messy room, there was no space for new paths or furniture pieces - in my head, before I could find anything, I had to clean it up. I literally needed to sit with my feelings sometimes, while other times, I had to go on walks with them. Even though I was always primarily alone, there were a lot of things surrounding my head. No psycho-social occurrences or experiences I had to process, but more distinctly my emotions that I sometimes tended to suppress. Every so often, during my walks, I felt that I was onto something, that I was finally working up some deeply hidden courage to overthrow the master of stress in my head that kept everything going badly. However, the second I opened the door to my room, everything always came back to me. It was like a very poorly built dam that broke once the  force pushing against it from behind became too strong. I would have been lying if I had sworn I felt brave, since my anxiety kept flooding my thoughts violently day to day. It wouldn't leave. Time after time, day by day, I was trying to figure out whether it was my fault that I was always so anxious or if my anxiety was just so bad.

This day also ended, and so did the next. And the one after that, and the one after that one. Week by week passed by. And I was lying on the ground trying to find out how to find out something worth knowing. All I did was think about what I should actually be thinking about for my own good. It was like walking on eggshells around myself, only worse.