The mind really is one powerful tool and organ. It can take us to great heights and also be our greatest enemy at times. 

There is nothing I know that can match the giddy pleasure or the desperate pain of the mind. Nothing. 

For most of my life my mind was the source of both my greatest fears and greatest achievements and ambitions. I also took much needed comfort and escape there, when life was testing me. Alone with my thoughts. My oldest resting place of all. 

I can appreciate those people who have suffered at the hands of mental health in all it’s magnificent complexity and brutal cruelty.  It must be particularly painful. 

Whenever our bodies turn on us it is the most frightening and overwhelming feeling of all. The ultimate and most intimate of all betrayers and harmers. 

It seems amazing to me now that the source of a great deal of my pain and anguish is also that place that helped me learn, speak, walk, love, grieve, draw, create, question, explore and discover… My mind. 

Today I felt particularly Ill and so my mind took me to imagine a place and a time where I was no longer here and no longer suffering. It was a very enticing thought indeed. I imagined a time when my husband didn’t have to take care of me as he does. I Imagined the life he could have!? Imagined if his life was not tied down to someone who needs such help? …  Imagine all my suffering and struggling over!

Only a complete fool has never thought such thoughts. For most chronically ill these thoughts are not a matter of IF we have them but WHEN. It isn’t even a self deprecating thought.  But rather a deeply sterile and emotionally detached line of  thinking. 

Sometimes it can also be a very deep and dark tunnel to fall into and a very hard one to come back from. 

Without being melancholy or dramatic, the simple truth is that it would be a much easier and different life for him and all my loved ones. 

Finding a way to make our minds push aside the rational, truthful logic of it is the trick. The real mind game. 

The mind games that we play, many we will play for most of our lives and the truth for me is that they are never easy games and they rarely have clear answers. 

There is an old saying that the trick is when to stop playing. A gambler who knows when to stop playing or a professional athlete that knows when to stop playing the game has much more control over their lives and their future; or so the saying goes… And perhap there is a hidden truth that when it comes to games with our minds we will certainly benefit from knowing when not to play. 

I am still learning this skill. 

At this stage of my life I am learning better how to balance when to use my mind and when to use my heart. Sometimes the decisions I make with my heart and not my mind are just as rewarding. 

At least, despite everything, I am still learning. 

Gentle hugs. 

Trish.