Often my thoughts are either poison, or are beginning to turn. It’s like they’re fermenting–a jar in the closet of some hippie who doesn’t have a clue what they’re doing. It stinks, it’s wrong, and nobody wants it. My thoughts are fermenting and I’m drunk on their repetition.
If that analogy didn’t land, here’s another: Still water doesn’t scare most people, but it should. This is where toxins grow and change. Without moving, still water will bite deeper than any current.
Whether you look at anxious rumination like DIY kombucha or a puddle, it doesn’t really matter–either way, you swallow and you’re fucked.
The best way I know to stop these fermenting thoughts is to change where I am. If I am in bed, thinking in circles, I’ll take a walk. Sometimes it’s midnight or 20 degrees, so I’ll sit on the porch with a blanket. Two blankets, fuck it. I’ll take a book to the kitchen table. Anything to change my surroundings.
I had a therapist, years ago, who would make me walk in straight lines down the hallways of his office. After four steps he’d yell, “STOP! Reroute! Reboot!” I’d stop, turn completely around, and walk in the opposite direction.
He was a crackpot, absolutely. He called me “Chopin” (presumably because I resembled a corpse?) Crazy dude, but he knew something in his very strange, mostly unhelpful way. Not about my musical prowess, and it’s a stretch, sure, but once I realize I’m fully fermenting in my own shit, I stop, and change my surroundings.
And it helps–taking a walk helps.
Asking someone to take a walk is the most romantic gesture I can think of. Asking someone to be next to me–to walk next to me. For a very long time this is what I needed–for someone to be always there. Now, in the wake of closet kombucha, I take walks alone.
It’s romantic, me and me. She’s kinda hot, but oh man is she fucked up–less so though, now that I’ve gotten to know her.
This may be overearnest as a sentiment, but I do not count being sincere as a fault–though I have many. And I count them. That’s a list for another time, dear, sweet reader. I want to keep at least a little allure.
Damn, post jar-in-the-closet-fermentation, allure may be a lost cause for us. You know all my least sexy secrets. Good thing there are so few of you.
Allure aside, I walk to disrupt still water. I listen to music. I read. I write nonsense. Doesn’t matter. I’m walking in straight lines down hallways and I’m out of my head. And it helps.
I love you, ya know.
I hope you know how much.
X. Al
Girl Seeking Peanut Butter 
Exactly so.
I remember the afternoon I finally saw that my thoughts were not real. Useful sometimes, but not real or concrete. I don’t have to obey or react to the thoughts; they have no authority. They just keep rolling along, this stream of thoughts driven by associations and wants. I forget sometimes and fall back into reactivity, but there are those moments of stillness that I do appreciate.
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