You see, I got a lot of bipolar epic emotional stuff going on. I am not alone. Alas there is an online community of us peeps with issues and challenges beyond the norm.
Sometimes it feels like you are fighting a war. Worse. Multiple wars. There's the one with yourself, all internalised. Your doubts and fears and stresses and angers and triggers. Tearing at you, sapping your strength, distracting you from your search for a more fulfilling life. One where you can function...
Then there's other wars. The real close circle of family wars. Mother issues. Father issues. Separation anxiety. The daddy didn't love me wars. Neglected or overlooked children wars...
Then there's wars we have with society. I have a beef with you, society! You aren't as good as what's written on the packaging! This is false advertising, all this talk of peace, freedom and compassion... where is the action to support the words?
Then there's religious wars. With all due respect to all, imaginary friends with benefits wars. Media-fueled, political spin wars (we used to call it propaganda back in my day, but hey, I call a spade a spade when I see it being used like a spade)... everyone talking of violence and hate as if this is the norm wars... facepalm...
Then there's financial wars. Staying just above the surface wars. Living day to day, week to week at best wars. Juggling a million balls in the air wars. Working too hard. Stressed. Starting to get irritable and cranky, and outright angry, seeing blame and fault where it maybe isn't, responding in ways that, in hindsight, could have perhaps been handled better wars...
...and back to the wars within yourself, as the person, trying to hold it all together, to "hold your shit", if you pardon the vulgarity (I blame the French... hahaha...). Those wars within yourself... they're tearing you apart...
You've got to get a handle on things, Si. That's what I thought. All of this internal struggling was killing me. In the very early days on BlueBoard, I was speaking as someone who had been diagnosed with Depression. But in reading it back after a few years, the bipolar was beaming from the screen, as it were. My words were mirroring what I was feeling and thinking, and they reveal a lot. All of our words do, even the ones we mistakenly say and wish we could take back...
And then there's those most powerful words of all... the ones you never use... the ones you never say... they can be powerful good, or powerful bad words...
Self talk words... the "voice" within our heads (as distinct from hearing voices - nice topic recently peeps. I look forward to reading it.)...
What are our thoughts saying to us? Are you aware of your own voice of your thoughts within your head? Go on. Stop reading this rubbish that I'm typing for a moment. Go into as close an approximation of Mindfulness state as your current understanding or motivation in that area will allow...
Listen to your thoughts...
What are you saying, in there? [Si taps his forehead] [Tonk! Tonk! Tonk! Sounds like hollow wood...]
Stop for a moment what you are doing, and really listen to your inner world of thoughts...
The words you use... they are the most powerful of all. Because, in many ways, you can learn to control them or make them a lot quieter and easy to ignore. I still have a nagging voice in my head that keeps me on the right track. It stops me being an alcoholic for a start, and that's something grand...
See what I did there?
I identified myself as having two separate aspects of my "Me". There was what I generally see as "myself", and then there was another part of me that says in a disapproving tone - "Si... dude... come on, man... ease up on the booze [or insert random obsession or rant topic or inappropriate lifestyle choice]...
Instead of it being a battle within me, you know... all that war crap I rambled on about for aaaages...
I saw two parts of myself come together in unity to restore balance. It was not a war within, because I have learned to tone down the harsh nature of my internal critical voice to a large extent. Those harsh words I used to say to myself. The brutal self loathing. The doubt. The fear. All that, and more...
It can still be brutal, and believe me... I'm a writer. Writing is my life. I have a way with words. I wonder sometimes if my occasional subtle subtexts get noticed, but it doesn't matter... they're there for me to enjoy...
But getting back to the matter at hand, "that" inner voice...
The words we choose. I could be brutal, tearing myself a new one, with all of the words at my disposal, finely crafted to do the most hurt or expose the greatest weakness, those inner prideful thoughts fall away and are ripped apart by words like that. The hurt is intense. And deep.
I had to go through that inner war with myself, and I am grateful as all crap that I came out the other side, alive and able to resume my chosen life path of self evolution. I call it the Self Evolution Revolution. I tried to start a hashtag thing, but nobody really cared in the end. I thought it was snappy... hahaha...
I am grateful that I survived my intense 5 years of reshaping my inner and outer reality. I have learned that the power we have over the Multiverse around us is actually surprising...
We are incredibly powerful entities. We have consciousness. We have the cognitive skills to be able to identify ourselves as separate from "others". We have developed such high ideals as Love and Compassion... sometimes we have reshaped, redefined and bent the corners of those ideals to cope with the realities of life in the Really Real, but they remain high ideals all the same...
What can we do with our consciousness, I wonder? There are many choices. We can become self-obsessed to the exclusion of all others. Or we can be a door mat that everyone wipes their feet on without saying thanks. We can be people pleasers. We can be extremely conflict averse. We can be anxious. We can be depressed. We can be flying high as a kite or tripping the light fantastic.
Except in extreme altered states of consciousness, our words do much to control what we do. Unless it's a reflex action to protect yourself, you don't move until you form a course of action in your mind, and that course of action can be defined by the words your currently dominant inner voice is using, no matter how intense the emotion behind it all...
Teach yourself to listen to that inner voice of your thoughts. We are all different. Take the time to listen to your own thoughts. Take a moment to hear your inner voice. It's all about the words, even the tone it is "thought" in...
I know mine. I don't need to be telling you too much about my inner voices. They have served me well. In unity now, we walk this journey through life together as partners, all of our voices not always in agreement. Often there is a quiet discussion, but it's all very respectful for the most part, with the occasional relapse into being harsh. But! We walk together, navigating this meat suit through life as best as possible, trying to climb the self evolutionary ladder. The Self Evolution Revolution indeed!
We got rid of the war words. The brutal ones. The cruel ones. Why be so harsh? A polite word will do, escalating up to a stern word. But all that tearing strips off yourself is no use whatsoever. All the hand wringing and stuff. It's exhausting. It's brutal. The tears I've cried... oh my, Cry Me A River was always a joke song to me. I have cried many worlds full of oceans by count of my tears, each a salty reminder that life can thrive in the shallows and depths of salty water... @BlueBay... I'm thinking of you at this point, sweetie. Huggles...
And back to the words. And the wars. The problem with internal wars is that you're so busy fighting that, whilst at the same time fighting all the wars in the Really Real. If you could get rid of the internal war by learning to control your thinking (which has the added advantage of easing the emotions closer to their "normal" levels (don't ask me to define "normal" - even with all of the words at my disposal, this room full of monkeys tapping on typewriters has no idea whatsoever about how to define "normal")...
When you calm the war within, you have so much more Energy and Focus. You have Resolve. Resilience. You are the duck, and all of the world is rolling off your back just fine. Just wiggle your tush, and swim on with a Quack!
[Si said that whole last paragraph internally in his Niles Crane voice (you know, from Frasier - one of my fave shows, by the by)]
Voices. Words. They help to shape our actions and order our inner turmoil. Try to define the conflict you are feeling inside. Look within. Find out what is hurting you. Use words to investigate it.
But words only go so far. Realise there is much beyond the realm of words that also needs to be healed, repaired and otherwise nurtured...
I have hated my self for the longest time. The thing I liked least as a kid? If a genie popped up and had offered me one wish, do you know what it would have been? I was bullied for many years in primary school and high school, so you might imagine I would wish that to be different. No... it made me who I am. It was the fiery furnace and the quenching waters that forged this inner steel that partly is me... so, no, I would not wish for the bullying to have been different. I accept it, have made peace with it, have forgiven, have even come to the point of realisation that there was never anything to forgive. It was just us humans, bumping into each other in our bumbling walking journey through our lives...
The one thing I would wish? To never have to sit at the hairdressers and have my hair cut. My mum did the worst bowl cut ever, it was truly horrendous. It was bully bait, and the waters were well burleyed with it...
By the bye... have you guys noticed the recurring water theme yet? Tears, oceans, salt water, quenching... giggle...
"What's so bad about having your hair cut at the hairdressers, Si?" I hear you ask. "Your hair would look better, and there would be one less thing to be bullied about," I hear you add...
Yes, but there are the mirrors. And They are every-effing-where. Surrounded by mirrors. Nowhere to turn for a boy who always avoided looking himself in the eye in the mirror... because he hated himself so much that he wanted to smash the silly thing, showing this pathetic excuse for a human being, plucked from his family and friends at the age of 8, neglected by his parents because they were too busy serving the machine and working their butts off getting established here in Oz (try explaining that to an 8 year old... hahaha...)
With words...
See what I did, again?
Words. I have delved deeply into myself and found out some of the reasons my noodle is so squiggly. I used words to come to a mutually benificial emotional understanding and thought voice understanding of what took place, why, and ultimately what positives I can draw from it, for the bad stuff is done and dusted. Now it's time to make something good come of it...
And I personally use words to do it. Like what I've just written. Words...
I've had a great cry today. I have been quite teary over the past few months, leading up to Mothers Day and all that bother. Rather than fight this and feel bad about feeling bad, I am going with it, and writing some things down along the way...
There is much in those few words...
Goodbye Mum... I Love You Forever...
