My mind can be a bit of a car crash at times. I have huge difficulty in purging negative thoughts and this must be linked to my huge guilt complex. I don’t just feel guilt, I nurture it. Unless my mind is occupied at all times, negatives whizz around, fending off any positives that try to make their way in. Positives, it seems, bounce along; have a fleeting presence only to disappear into some black hole that I cannot access. Yet negatives enter from every angle, finding those tiny nooks and crannies and lying in wait to strike. I have a special nook that feeds a train of thought headed ‘things I could have done better, or should not have done at all, from birth to the present day’. Ousting them takes a lot of mental energy. But they return.
When I was a school girl, I had an almost photographic memory and I wonder whether this characteristic has a bearing? I can remember feeling so guilty about recalling the whole of a lesson, to the extent that I could just recreate the presentations word for word. I spent a lot of time trying to change key words to make the recall look more ‘my own’. I felt that I should write up lessons in my own words, but the words of the teacher were revolving around in my head. Today, I realise that I should have used my amazing memory and perhaps got some recognition for it, instead of hiding it and increasing my guilt!
But then, I spent a lot of years brushing off any commendation(s) of my few talents as I learned early in life that if I excelled and was lauded, the pat on the back was short lived yet the moment I did not excel, it was a talking point for a long time.
Writing is of course a great way of letting go and I feel better already!
