Sanity

I was getting angry in the office, bursting into tears in my car, not just as a one-off but regularly. I thought it was sick, and I went to see my GP about it. I thought it was caused by an unaccustomed hormonal state.

Weeping while driving is not ideal, nor is screaming- it made my throat sore.  I was probably not giving as much attention to the task as I ought, and while driving I have a responsibility to those I might hurt by my inadvertence. While the office might be fucked up, other people have their own difficulties, and my shouting does not help. Eventually I thumped my car into a crash barrier, damaging it irreparably, and I am relieved I hurt no-one else beyond causing a traffic jam for a bit.

So I have some sympathy with that part of me which says, that is insane. It is sick. Stop it, control yourself, or find some chemical way of doing it if you don’t have the self-control. It is not advancing your interests. But it is entirely wrong. I was- am- expressing what I feel, being conscious of it. It would be better, certainly, to feel my feelings and permit them, be conscious of them, and integrate them- not necessarily show them, but use them constructively rather than suppressing, denying and diverting them destructively. A house with a roof on is better than one without, but the one without is better than a site without the foundations dug.

I felt on Friday at Tim’s 5Rhythms that my war was in balance, that the two parts of me which each consider the other insane were at stalemate, and I feel now, Monday 26th, that I should go with the emotional rather than the conventional bit. The conventional bit has worked out the rules, more or less- don’t burst into tears while driving, for example, a good rule and worthy of all acceptation- and wants to keep them and survive, and sees the emotional bit as just trouble. On Friday, I felt that each part knew the other to be insane, and I could not choose between them, and now-

 I want to get the roof on.

I want to go with the emotional bit, wherever it leads. To extend the metaphor, it may not be a house I can afford, and I have no idea what living in it would be like, but putting the roof on- plastering the walls, getting some furniture, perhaps some nice art work for the walls to make it really comfortable- is what I Choose to devote myself to, now.