a brain is only..
Grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about thought. Yes, it’s about as painful as it sounds and chips away a bit at time that others may think there could be a more productive use for. Nonetheless, it is kind of a mental project I have been working on that I’m determined to stick with until I can prove the possibilities to myself.
Here’s the thing: my brain has these little quarks that drive me insane and some of which that have more control over my life than I would like. For one, I have had OCD since I was at least a child. Whether or not I had symptoms since birth, I doubt. I don’t know that it can manifest itself in a brain that young, but I certainly remember behaviors as young as 4 or 5 that if I didn’t follow through with, I would get this unbearable feeling of wanting to crawl out of my skin and fear it would literally be the death of me if I didn’t. On top of that, there are the more common quarks, such as the way my stomach will flop over at the mention of any painful incident relating to nails, both finger/toe and metal varieties.
I always wondered what it was that could possible make our stomachs so weak that the mention of certain topics could nauseate us, some to the point of vomiting. They’re just words; it’s completely in our own head. Nothing is making us physically ill, but there seems to be this strong connection for some people between certain combinations of words and their stomach malfunctioning. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems ridiculous that those two things should have anything in common.
Most people just let these things go. Sucking or not sucking, they just come to accept that that is the way their brain works and you can’t change that. I, however, refuse to believe that based on three things:
1) my worst and most life-consuming obsessive compulsion only came to be within the past couple years, meaning that my brain existed without it at some point, so there is no reason it can’t again.
2) everything weak has the potential to be strengthened, including a stomach and especially when the trigger is 100% made up in our heads.
3) if I am capable of un-convincing my brain that the smell of greasy food alone is guaranteed to have me waking up the next morning a broken out, puffy, bloated mess of a human being, I can convince it of anything.
Believe it or not, we control our own brains and they believe everything they hear. That’s why when we stand in front of the mirror and tell ourselves over and over again that we are beautiful, we start to really believe it even if we didn’t when we started the ritual. I am determined to reprogram the things I can’t stand about the way my brain works. I am positive it would make a huge difference in a lot of peoples’ lives to know that it’s possible to change the things that we think just.. are. I don’t think anything about our bodies is just set in stone for a lifetime. Besides, what else are we going to do with our short time here.. just make an income?
