Jenga

Late last year something happened to my brain. The blue screen of death appeared in my head. Fatal error. I forgot the Apple ID of my soul. There was no reset button, just a couple of months of hopeless crying while not sleeping and wanting to scratch the inside of my brain until it bled. All while trying to keeping going, keep doing, keep breathing.

It’s six months later and there’ll be a bit at some point about how I got from there to here but it’s all vague in my memory at the moment. I definitely remember when I first thought “Shit we’re in trouble here” when a friend looked horrified at what I thought was a hilarious story of lunch time drinking. They asked the question that everyone who is mental loves to be asked, “Are you ok?” and I realised that I was 100% not ok (I can’t remember what my answer was though..I suspect I did some sort of “Look, the Pope” gag to avoid both eye contact and answering). Apart from that one memory the last six months is like a new Netflix show…I watched 20 mins, fell asleep for a bit and then woke up halfway through the second episode without knowing what was going on. So it’s easier to explain “now” while I remember it.

I like to think, a lot. Therapy lady says I’m not a worrier as such – I’m a compulsive problem solver. All day, every day, even trying to solve problems that haven’t yet happened. Which is a noble problem to have – trying to make everything perfect for everyone. It does however come with a side order – I simply cannot cope with the noise and the volume that is generated in my brain and I cannot find the off switch. Like when Jean Grey is turning into Dark Phoenix and can’t control her telepathy. If nothing else thats makes me sound way cooler than I am.

So this is me now, with a head of 1000 thoughts and no filter. So “this” should be a filter. I’m supposed to put some of those thoughts here and that frees up space, right? My brittle and cynical side views it like a fucked up version of Jenga. You can remove a block from the stack but in this version you want to put it back on the stack. The stack never gets smaller, it just changes dimensions. And like actual Jenga you could take a block out, and with massive clumsy hands knock the whole thing down.

But what’s the worst that can happen doing “this”. I actually know the worst, I’ve thought about it. The Jenga tower collapses and it can’t be rebuilt. Best case will be that I stand on one of those bastardy blocks and it hurts for a bit but I manage to build the tower again with a few less blocks.