Today has been a bad day. No different to many hundreds, if not thousands of days like it in my past, but perhaps I am just more aware of what I do thus heightening my negative self talk and disappointment in myself. I have struggled to focus or concentrate on anything , have felt restless and somewhat anxious. Most days I am just numb. I operate on rote – its Groundhog Day over and over again. Being alone exacerbates and increases the behaviour but I am not forced to seek isolation. It’s something I have always been drawn to and its all I ever knew growing up. Within the confines of my marriage, as much as I adore my husband and children, I have always managed to create times of solitude and my family accepted it as part of the family dynamic. I love nothing more than being with them but then I scuttle back to the familiarity of patterns of behaviour that are as intrinsic to me as breathing.
Somewhere, deep inside me is the thought and knowledge that life could be so much sweeter, so much better , more liberating than I have ever known. I allow small glimmers of this sublimated yearning to rise from within but it is quickly stifled as the habits that imprison me engulf any thoughts of freedom or exploration of another lifestyle. I’m crippled and yet I self sabotage the idea of change before it can even begin to manifest itself. Why do we choose destruction over liberation? Its the craziest notion and yet this is what addicts do. Where does the statement ‘ better the devil you know’ actually come from? From the devil himself is most likely because its a ridiculous phrase if you really analyse it. Why are we so fearful of making changes that we know, intellectually, will be so much better for us and ultimately make us much happier? We humans really are crazy, mixed up beings – well, I speak for myself.
I HAVE to take the positives out of this. Right now, today, I am actually thinking about my behaviour and dwelling on it. Its not having the usual numbing effect – rather, its making me feel uncomfortable and a bit annoyed and irritated with myself for being so shallow and useless. I know that negative self talk is enormously destructive and this has governed my life hugely. I can therefore continue along this road to nowhere or I can take from this, the fact that I am actually addressing the problem and extract from that, a small ray of hope. The biggest challenge is to take this forward and explore it further in coming days and not to leave it hanging as I have so often done in the past.
