2am, that time of the morning when the brain is down in the basement, sweeping out all the negative thoughts and emotions. This hour of the morning is the time when I go through all my conversations with people, second guessing what they said versus what they meant, and coming up with all sorts of hypotheses which are generally totally off the wall. But at 2am it all seems perfectly reasonable and I can convince myself of pretty much anything, so long as it's negative.
I have learnt to pay no attention to what I think at 2am, as I know it's all the negatives being cleared out of my mind. Problem is of course that I remember this at about 8am, and at 2am I'm like a dog with a particularly juicy bone, refusing to let go of it. I am so good at this, I can be absolutely 100% convinced of something that depresses me to the point of feeling absolutely 100% certain that my life is going down the drain at an astonishing rate and really I should just give up and go live as a hermit somewhere. Then in the morning after a pot of tea, I think again and realise that I was in fact thinking with 100% of my screwed up crazy self and nothing I had become convinced about was remotely correct. And I say firmly to myself, never going to do that again. Of course I do.
Tonight, or this morning, I decided to jettison the negative thoughts and write this blog instead. I'll sleep a lot better, albeit for a shorter time span, if I get this out of my head now. I had three distinct thoughts floating around in my mind. I've got one of them out and in the process I hope I've also chased out the negative thinking that initiated it all. The reason behind the change in my mindset is actually the fat siamese. She is lying on her pillow on the bed, snoring gently to herself. The other cat is stretched out beside my legs. She is much younger and thinner and she does not snore although she does pounce on my toes, and walk up my body to touch noses at an hour when I am guaranteed to be unappreciative.
Back to the fat siamese. I was lying awake indulging in my pity party, and she was lying beside me snoring on her pillow. So I reached out to touch her to stop the snoring. She woke and was so delighted to be patted (feline interpretation of any sort of touch) at such an unusual hour that she immediately started purring loudly and began cleaning my hand. This of course sent a little tide of good feelings along my nervous system that chased away enough of the sads for me to see that I was doing that 2am thing again. So here I am writing myself back into optimistic mode.
The fat siamese and I have had our moments. Possibly she was delighted to be patted at this hour because usually I am kicking her off the bed due to her lifelong habit of chewing her tail - loudly, for an hour or more at a time. It is as irritating to me as fingernails on a blackboard or a knife scraping on a plate. All her life, since she was small I have been saying in tones of extreme exasperation 'Taz, don't chew your tail!' and she has been ignoring me with supreme feline indifference. Until recently.
She was lying in her more customary position of across my legs, chewing away with volume and gusto and I said my catchphrase. She stopped, tail still in her mouth and gave me the death stare. Aha!! Our minds had a silent tussle. My mind was saying Aha! You do understand what I'm saying! The feline mind was saying Damn, busted, maybe if I stare hard enough I'll melt the human's mind and she will forget this ever happened. My mind was responding Na-uh, you understood me and I have won. She narrowed her eyes even more, she knew I knew she knew and she didn't know how to fix this error. So I said it again and I'm pretty sure she cursed me, but finally she dropped her tail - thunk! She's fat and so is her tail. Then with a final flourish, presumably to activate the curse, she dropped her head with an even louder thud beside her tail and went to sleep. So now, when she chews her tail I say my phrase and am rewarded each time with the exaggerated stare, drop, thud sleep reaction.
The third thing I was thinking about, and remember it's early early morning, so my mind is flicking about even more than usual, is the difference the way we feel makes to the attitude of people around us. Today I was at work, and I was feeling in a super good mood. I was painfully bright and cheerful (I am not usually obviously happy like this). I was full of optimism, a smile on my face all day, the world was bright and everything was good. I was one of those people I usually find really annoying. So everybody I met today was presented with super happy Sheryl. And they all reacted very positively. Now I usually present as a cheerful person, I am brilliant at wearing a mask in public. So I smile and chat and make all the right responses and give every indication of a happy person. And usually I am a happy person - just not generally a fizzy bubbly happy person. Today I was genuinely overflowing with happiness (maybe I'm going crazy, that could be it) and I got it back from everyone I came into contact with. Everyone I spoke to walked away smiling with their moods lifted. I was like the happy fairy today.
It was a slightly unnerving experience because as I said, I am not usually the happy shining fairy. There are people in this world who float along on the surface of life. They seem to be always happy, always smiling, content with their lives and never seeming to feel any sort of dissatisfaction. They live in the top of their minds, where it's light and bright and optimistic. Or maybe they don't have a basement. I have tended to be more at home in the basement of my mind, with the anxiety and worry. I second guess everything, worry about things I can't control, dive down into deep emotions and then struggle to get out again. I'd really like to live in the top of my mind, it seems a pretty nice place from my little trip there today.
So that's my 2am ramblings, they're just random segments from my brain - no point or anything, and not really even connected except they were the things spinning around at the forefront. Now I think I will be able to sleep!
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