Prisoner to Unreal Thoughts

I had trouble sleeping last night. I’m not really sure on what to blame it on at this point because I don’t really know what the cause was. There is one thing that I do understand though. I was blessed with a mind that not only has the ability to create stories and people, but also given the ability to remember events of my past vividly.

You might be telling yourself that this isn’t a very big deal. That’s great that I can remember things pretty clearly. I’m sure there are some people who would love to have the ability to remember things from their past that were worth remembering. I on the other hand, I have the opposite effect. I can remember things, but they aren’t really things that I want to remember. And though I can remember them with almost crystal clarity, my mind often warps them into visions that didn’t actually take place.

It’s my curse, I guess. It’s a course that own mind has taken memories from my past and used them to create a sort of mental prison. It doesn’t matter how far back the memory seems to be. As long as it was a memory that I would have rather forgotten because it wasn’t important or I just didn’t want to remember it, it will use it.

So what’s the big deal about this? People often remember the bad more than they remember the good. But what makes my experience different is that it leaves me worried. It leaves me worried to the point to where I have trouble sleeping at night. The memories created in my mind are so real, that I often must talk myself out of them in order to calm myself down. I could create a situation in my head that would probably never take place and yet my mind would make me believe that it’s a very real possibility that it would happen. The experience is completely exhausting to say the least.

The one thing that seems to set it off is boredom. If I find myself bored, my mind wanders. Without little or any warning at all, my mind will be jumping along at memory after memory until it creates a situation. When that situation is blown completely out of proportion, the anxiety sets in. It’s this rogue anxiety that bothers me so much. I really don’t know how to get rid of it. At best, I can channel it into another work like working on the blog that I’m working on now. All I can do is let it run its course, until the facts that I know to be true, become too overpowering for the anxiety to exist and it goes away.

Sometimes, I honestly think I’m going insane. I like to consider myself a rational person when it comes to my own ideas. It’s just strange to know that my mind does this to me. Perhaps it’s God’s way of showing me I’m still human. That I can still hurt even if the ideas aren’t real. All I know is, I’ve only managed to successfully channel this strange energy only a few times. I only hope that it doesn’t ruin me from all the times it was too much to bear.

Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen.