My brain had the opportunity to think about things.

Just surviving to reach the next 7 hours worth living.

Those few of you that read my articles and followed my writings know that throughout the ups and downs in my life, and those of the past year, in particular, have been... taxing. In the past years, the only purpose in my life was to spend 7 hours a week with my son. Whatever I did in the other 6 days and 17 hours of the week had one goal only, which was to get through that time in the least miserable way with the least suffering.

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Not getting any better.

Recently I noticed I even stopped caring about most things I used to care a lot about. My way of dealing with it was basically denial, and keeping my brain occupied so much it didn't have time to think too much about things so it wouldn't be able to draw conclusions. I knew deep inside that whatever those conclusions would be, they wouldn't be good, and I wouldn't like them.

Dealing with it by not dealing with it. Great idea numbnuts!!

So I'd stay awake until I was so tired I nearly passed out, then go to bed and fall asleep within seconds. I'd put in my earbuds with hardcore music turned up loud enough that it was un-ignorable whenever I had to wait somewhere or if I had to go somewhere that would take me a while to get to so I wouldn't start thinking on the way there. I spent most of my time at my computer, something that never runs out of things that capture my interest and attention, which kept my brain from thinking about... stuff.

I guess eventually it was inevitable.

I've been able to keep that up for over 5 years, until yesterday. I had delimited my scooter by removing the speed signal from the CDI unit, and connected the 12v power cable to it, effectively removing the limiter from the engine system, allowing the scooter to operate unrestricted. Where its max speed had been 30km/h before, it now gets up to 75Km/h, but I needed to test if my trickery had worked and if it was reliable. So I hopped on the scooter and went for a ride. Music pumping through my earbuds, and I enjoyed it. The trick worked and the engine ran better than it ever had before. Before I knew it though I was three hours away from home before I decided to start to drive back home.

Oh oh

Five or ten minutes later my music went silent, and I found out I had not charged my phone resulting in an empty battery. So there I was, at least 2,5 hours away from home, without music and no way to fill the silence. My brain swiftly took advantage of the opportunity, kicking into overdrive so much I couldn't even keep up with my own thoughts at first. But after a short while though my thoughts became coherent again and everything and I do mean everything no matter how insignificant, that wasn't right about my life, paraded through my mind while I was driving home.

It was like a montage of video clips.

Things like how much I missed Spock and Sheev (my dog and my cat) that passed away last year or the garbage bags that I kept forgetting to bring to the container. The leaky faucet that I still had to fix and the hurt I still felt about the way my aunts and uncles had abandoned any and all contact with me and my son after my Ma had passed away. How much I missed having a job and that I still had to go visit Arno so I could get him to pay me back the 30 euros he still owed me since 2019.

Every little problem and grievance, everything that was wrong in my life ran through my thoughts as if to remind me of them. By the time I came home there was no stopping my brain, and nothing I tried managed to take my brain's attention away from contemplating my problems and the current state of everything that makes up my life at that moment. And what I had feared came to pass: I came to the conclusion that the joys and good things in my life were nowhere near worth going through the trouble and misery in my life.

What hurts the most

In particular difficult to accept, and process the pain and grief, was the way that whenever anything good happened in my life for the past decade, every time I felt happiness or joy in some measure of significance something so disastrous and so painful happened to completely destroy that happiness or joy. From my wife leaving me, losing my job, discovering the extent of my debts, being forced to sell my car, having my son taken from me, having the IRS brand me a fraud making it impossible to pay off my debts, losing one of my 4 best friends, losing my mother, losing another one of my best friends, losing my grandmother, and so on and on and on right up to the present day.

The conclusions were not the end

But as opposed to what I expected, my thoughts did not stop at the conclusion that my life wasn't worth the misery and suffering I experience. My thoughts turned to, almost literally, sorting everything wrong in my life into 2 categories. One category was unsolvable. Things that I could do nothing about to improve or fix. The other category was solvable. Things that I could do something about, that I could improve or fix without having to rely on anyone else but myself.

Then I started to... perform triage almost. I started to rank the problems and issues on how much effort and time it would take to solve them or at least improve them enough to be bearable. Easy fixes at the top and hard, time and energy-consuming ones at the bottom.

My brain never stopped thinking through basically my whole life as I live it today, in a constructive and solution-oriented way. And to my own shocking surprise, an hour or so ago, I noticed something... a feeling... that I hadn't felt in a long time. Something I never expected to truly feel anymore.

Never thought I'd live to experience it

I felt like it was entirely within my abilities to improve, change and expand the things that make up my life to such an extent that I could enjoy it again. To be truly glad to be alive again. I felt... I feel... not only CAN I do it but I feel eager and look forward to getting started working on achieving it.

A state of mind that had evolved from a decade of misery and suffering and grieving, from Don Quichotting, pain, and loss, has been completely unrecognizably transformed within 2 days into one where hope and determination, and confidence are part of the foundation. My mental psyche has turned its focus and determining insights away from looking back and is now looking the other way. I'm looking ahead, forward, into the future. I know what I can, should, and will do to improve myself, my home, my life.

Tired, exhausted, spent.

I also feel tired now. I have never been so exhausted as I am now. As if all the time I have spent not sleeping, not giving myself the chance to rest to keep my thoughts distracted and busy, are now catching up to me demanding compensation. But that's okay. Because now I'm no longer afraid of the silence. I don't fear being alone with my thoughts anymore.

So I am going to bed after posting this, an article that I wrote because I wanted to put into words what happened over the past 2 days to better understand what happened myself. I have done that now, and I do understand more what happened and the consequences of it.

Like the third part of a trilogy

I truly feel like I've closed one chapter, or one book, of my life As if I am at the beginning of a completely new part of my life, a new chapter, or part of a series. And this time I am going to be a director, writer, and executive producer as well as the main lead actor. This time I am going to be in control. Self-determination.

Thank you for reading this.

Stay safe and stay happy!

@AnonSunamun