The Tangle

This is what I’ve been feeling like. 746 tangents, incomplete thoughts, worries, to-do’s, “shoulds” all spinning around my head. The chaos is winning today.

What are we supposed to do on those days when we feel like the tangled scribble is getting the best of us? I often find myself feeding the tangle just to see just how big it can get, and honestly I’m not a masochist.

Trying to get myself on track; whether the track of productivity, awareness, connection, creativity, self compassion, I often feel like I can’t approach any of that until I untangle the entire ball of confusion surrounding me.

Untangling is hard. Thoughts seemingly enjoy snowballing and taking us for a ride that is anything but fun. It makes me think of those godawful playground roundabouts. You know, those round spinning platforms of nausea? Under the guise of “fun”, I was first introduced to that sadistic device of torture at an early age. 

I remember seeing all the kids laughing and spinning, and I wanted to partake. As soon as I got on I was met with that familiar feeling of not fitting in. I knew it was supposed to elicit something other than an immediate raging headache, quickly followed by vomit, but then I never felt like other kids.

That deceptive shame-brain in action that tells us what we should experience somehow never seems to match what we actually experience. 

In my patterned reasoning, the tangle has a simplistic narrative attached. It says; here are all the thoughts, feelings, and situations that you need to sift and sort through. Just prioritize, organize, and start working through one by one, and the knots will slip away. 

Reality unfolds like the the roundabout. This is what you tell yourself it should be like, and here comes your wacko reality. Everyone else can untangle and spin with glee, you get confused and throw up.

Why is it that we make ourselves feel like the anomaly? We convince ourselves that we are that weird outlier. The one who lives with a snarl of buzzing confusion, always mocking our ability and strength because we see our differences as flaws. 

Our reality isn’t wacko, it is our individuality at its best and most challenging.

We see the tangle as the source of our suffering, but actually the story we tell ourselves about the tangle is what directs the outcome. Do we tell a story that paints us as an oddball outcast, a villain, a victim, a hero? 

The tangle is everything that life presents to us. Problems to solve, challenges to meet, experiences to process, relationships to navigate. 

So we can approach it like it’s a monster under the bed waiting to pull us under or we can start looking for the end of the thread to begin unwinding. 
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Or we can throw up.

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