Mind revealing compulsive thoughts and secrets
I don't have many secrets. I believe that a secret is something shared. If you don't share it with anyone, does it even exist? Is it alive? My mother-in-law sometimes told our children, "We have a little secret..." that intrigued me. Is that okay? Are people allowed to have a little secret, either together or alone? Of course, they are. Was I raised too strictly? Was the moral bar set too high? No, I don't think so, but secrets were not something we knew or cherished. It's a spiritual asset, a wealth for when you have nothing; you can always have a little secret.
What is my secret? I remember my mother accidentally once spilt the beans, unknowingly revealing a secret about my awkward puberty phase. I hadn't told my husband about it. He wouldn't have wanted to know. I didn't tell him not to keep my secret but to protect him. And let's be honest, he didn't sign up for that! I didn't keep it from him to be secretive, but more like a public service. Or maybe it's my feeling of shame that holds me back. Anyway, there are things I wouldn't say I like to discuss or never will speak about. Things from the past, love, things that occurred and fantasies, whether from childhood or now, are also not shared.
I find it comforting to fantasize without having a measuring stick behind me, ready to judge my thoughts. Of course, I am the first to bring out that measuring stick. I am the one who has all sorts of opinions about my thoughts. Was this thought okay? I am never truly free in my thoughts because there is a memorable self, a shadow I will never lose, constantly judging me.
So it is with my secrets. I try to hide them a bit from this inner critic, to shield them from the wind. Is that possible? Can we have secrets from you? I believe it is possible. We are that complex. In our minds, we can have secrets from our critics.
For example, I play a game with pavement tiles. I walk and follow the pattern, avoiding the cracks. I am only for the centre of the tiles, not halfway or partially, but precisely in the middle. There, we have such a thought: an obsessive-compulsive thought. But when is something just a thought, and when is it an obsessive-compulsive thought? How do we distinguish that within ourselves, and when? Perhaps all our thoughts are obsessive-compulsive thoughts. After all, it's almost impossible not to think.
Today, I tried an exercise: breathing consciously twenty times. Did I succeed? No! Countless times, I drifted away. Sometimes, I was one and a half breaths further, or I even forgot which breath I was on. You could call the exercise a forced thought. Other thoughts sometimes weave through it. You're breathing, you know you're breathing, and yet another thought plays through your mind. Simultaneously! But then, the strange thing is, I quickly think about which one is the forced thought. The thought of conscious breathing or the thought that sneaks between the bars of the fence?
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