Negative feelings don’t show up politely. They don’t knock on the door and ask if it’s a good time. Sometimes they slip in quiet, like they’ve always had a key. Other times they kick the damn door open, track mud across the floor, and sit down like they pay the rent. They never bring tools to fix what they broke.
I’ve learned over the years that pretending they aren’t there just makes them louder. Ignoring them never worked for me. They don’t leave. They wait.
One thing I do is write. Not because it’s noble, and not because I think everything I write is worth reading. Most of it isn’t. I’ve been filling notebooks most of my life. While my wife was dying, I started posting my work publicly because the pain had to go somewhere, and my head was running out of room to keep it all inside. When it stays inside, it grows teeth. When it’s on paper, it’s just ink, and sometimes that’s enough to make it let go.
Sometimes I draw. Freehand, pencil on paper, nothing fancy. There’s something about dragging an image out of your head and forcing it onto the page that slows the noise down. Writing helps, but drawing is different. When I’m sketching, my thoughts can’t outrun my hand, and that’s slow enough to make whatever’s got hold of me loosen its grip. I’m sure some egghead somewhere has a ten-dollar word for why that works. But any word over five dollars usually makes you sound like an asshole, so I don’t worry about the science of it. I just know it works.
Sometimes I read. Not the kind where you’re chasing a goal or trying to look smart. Just reading to get out of my own head for a while. History, crime novels, philosophy, anything that reminds me the world was screwed up long before I got here, and it’ll stay that way after I’m gone. Somebody else has already lived through worse and kept going, which makes it hard to sit there thinking my problems are the end of the story.
Coffee helps. Not because caffeine fixes anything, but because routine does. Grinding the beans, pouring the water, standing there half awake while the machine does its thing — that’s a small piece of the world that still makes sense when the rest of it doesn’t.
I also learned that silence isn’t the enemy, no matter what people say. I’ve always been a loner. For a long time I figured it was safer to keep my thoughts to myself, mostly because people mock what they don’t understand. When I was younger, that got under my skin more than I liked to admit. Part of the reason I started training, lifting, pushing myself the way I did, was because of that. Funny thing is, getting stronger didn’t stop the noise in my head — it just made it quiet enough to live with.
And quiet is enough. If I sit still long enough, the noise settles. Not gone, just quieter. Quiet enough to think instead of react.
And sometimes I laugh at it. Not the fake laugh you use in public, but the kind that comes out when you realize life doesn’t care what you had planned. You work, you worry, you try to keep things together, and something still comes along and knocks the whole thing sideways. After a while you either laugh at the mess or let it tear you up. Laughing is cheaper.
I don’t have a perfect system. Some days none of this works. Some days the best strategy is just getting through the day without doing something you’ll regret tomorrow.
That counts too.
Because coping isn’t about winning.
It’s about staying in the fight long enough to see the next morning.
Memoirs of Madness 