Brainfire

As I stop tossing & turning in my bed & look at the wall clock, I wonder how have I turned into an insomniac these days? The hands of the clock appear standstill at 3 am. I close my eyes only to struggle more against the sleep! The sleep & rest deprived brain is at it again; Thinking... yes thinking is its favourite past time.

As if the whole day is not enough, when the rest of the world is fast asleep I start thinking again in the middle of the night. With closed eyes I think about all those things that I keep thinking about throughout the day. And then I realize it's not just about what I think about the whole day but also how much I think.

The thoughts are like wildfire, one thought ignites another & so on. The unending sequence then continues until the fire is out of control. The thoughts range from my parents to my son to my wife to my career to anything under the sun. And many a times I keep thinking about the things, which do not exist at all. I start thinking about my parents' desires, their health, my wife's expectations, my next job & the worst part of it is that most of the times the thoughts are negative. Then these 3-4 thoughts overpower my whole thought process throughout the day. The redundancy is so unmatched that I usually get carried away & get a bit too worried about illusory things which may or may not even happen. And after some time as I realize that I can't take it anymore I feel the need of putting off all the negative thoughts, which is pretty difficult for me to achieve. I then understand that if I want to put them off I need to think about something else & so I start countering them with exactly opposite thoughts; the good ones!

I use these good thoughts to make myself feel good & give my brain a much-needed break but thinking about good things doesn't necessarily mean that the brain gets rest for a while. The deliberate, redundant good thoughts also keep tiring my brain like anything. The good thoughts & the subconscious yet deliberate effort to fuel these good thoughts exhaust me all the more. I feel there is no more space left in my head to accommodate any more thoughts; neither good nor bad. The negative thoughts & the good ones to counter them keep on pouring in the ever so occupied brain until it is on the verge of bursting. It's almost like trying to close the thousands of pop up windows, which keep popping up until you turn your computer off.

All the thoughts somehow are then directed towards my career path, my goals, and my achievements. They change their route swiftly towards this, as if their root lies in it. Even if I try to figure out what was I thinking about initially, I cannot. The thoughts about my career, my achievements & in turn about my future become more & more negative. They keep on converting so abruptly, absolutely within no time from positive to negative, good to bad to worse that I start thinking about myself as a person who is complacent about his growth, achievements, soon it changes from being complacent to an under-performer & finally I think of myself as someone who has not achieved anything is in his life.

I cannot go to the root of these thoughts; I cannot track down this ugly journey. I helplessly go on to conclude that I am a BIG ZERO or may be a little less than that. I end up thinking that I have reached a dead end from where starting afresh is impossible. I feel that I have neither the courage nor the energy required to start from scratch.

I lose patience I lose hope. I toss & turn more & more in my bed as the feeling of being a zero, a big zero keeps killing me inside. I want to put off all the thoughts but do not succeed, so I again try & counter them with positive ones. With defeated mindset & lost hope I open my eyes to the new sun. The wall clock stares at me & says good morning but I fail to understand what is good about the MORNING!
The brain catches the BRAINFIRE again!

Kay P Aar

04/12/2014