Recently, I watched a video talking about the struggle of being stuck in our head. A struggle we all deal with. They described our inner thoughts as a never ending fleet of cars moving through the road of your mind creating ever flowing traffic. The problem arises when people try to jump into the traffic to stop certain thoughts or they focus only on thoughts/cars which causes a traffic jam in the mind. The idea is to attain peace of mind by just sitting on the side of the road and just watch the cars go by.
I think this is a pretty cool depiction of the inner mind and how we can mess up our own traffic/ thought process. But I think it's more than that. Some cars are bigger than others in our mind. Some are over-sized vehicles, Hummers, Pickup trucks, 18-wheelers, and some even carry precious cargo. What about the cars that run off the road and chase after you? What about the car that tailgates every other car? Some are to be feared, while others needed to be looked after.
There is one thought/emotion that, in my experience, is bigger, more powerful, and more devastating than all the others; depression. Depression is a train barreling down on you. No warning, just barreling down on you and the track your on is just a circle. You can all you want, but you ain't escaping anytime soon. Or at least that's how I felt during my childhood and high school years. Forget about all those cars and traffic and shit. I wasn't paying attention to the road in my mind, I was too busy sprinting from the runaway train, but it didn't matter how fast I ran, my fat ass always got run over.
It was painful to be hit by depression, but the most pain comes from what hits you after. Depression is the head of the train, the next parts of the train to run you over are loneliness, anger, pain, and the caboose is the most painful, suicide. Man, when that caboose ran me over it hurt like hell. I remember crying myself to sleep after I got hit. I felt like the world would be better without me.
Today, I still deal with the train. But now, I can spot the train on it's way to me. Granted there are times I still get run over, but the damage isn't as painful. I know how to pick myself back up and dust myself off and when I see the train coming or get those dark thoughts in my head I know what to do. I just move out the way and wave. That's it! Just move out of the way and accept that it's there. Which is what you're supposed to do with a real train by the way. I know that's supposed to be common sense, but we all hear about people being run over by trains, so I feel like I had to say it.
While I certainly have been guilty of running into the traffic of my mind and making it worse, I do have some kind of peace of mind.
