💌 Little Miss Intrusive Thoughts 💌

How deeply do we connect with what we are afraid of?

I’m struck by our spectrum of emotions. Like any other morning, I stepped onto the L train headed to Manhattan, busying myself with the hunt for the perf Spotify queue and the usual New York commute catastrophe. Keys? Oo, cute shoes. Fuck I left my glasses at home again. I really gotta respond to that one email lollllll. Did I leave my friend on read? 

Then, right as my Airpod-wearing narcissism was finding it’s daily rhythm, I heard a man on the train yell, “LISTEN, BITCH. JUST TAKE YOUR BACKPACK OFF.” 

The whole train went silent. It’s hard to get commuters to pay attention to you when we’ve seen 13 dead birds on the ten minute walk to the train platform. So, when every single person on a sobering Tuesday morning stops doom scrolling, you have made a scene. 

The man was yelling at another man to take his backpack off because it’s common courtesy to take your backpack off to make a bit more space. And listen, I’ve been there, when the train is so crowded you’re inches from a full on five-way kiss situation and that one person acts like they paid for the first class ticket and taking up all the space in the world. But even then, with that little ping of annoyance, never in my wildest dreams would I scream at someone at the volume in which this man addressed his fellow passenger. Right? Well, I’d like to think that. I’d like to think I’m not that insane…out loud.

Even in my cloud of arrogance of how much of a good person I am, I can still acknowledge there are moments in life where I am the bad guy. When cars have the audacity to interrupt my Charli XCX-fueled pedestrian stride and I start cussing out the driver. When someone (probably innocently) bumps into me on the street and I have a full-on “I’m walking ‘ere!” Dustin Hoffman moment. Honestly, Dusty was pretty tame with that blurb. I tend to sputter something along the lines of “You dumb motherfucking bitchass piece of shit fucker fuck!” or something of that nature… 

I can go from 0 to 100 real quick. My mom used to call me, the dictator in Farsi, because if I didn’t get my way, everyone was about to suffer. It’s something I’m working on and fully acknowledge is not a good thing. But when I look around, at the backpack hater on the train, at my boyfriend playing video games, at the gunshots I hear outside my old apartment (#justnewyorkthingz), I think it’s natural, to some degree, to overreact. But I think there’s more to it than that. 

It’s hard to admit how many deranged nutso thoughts we are having if we don’t take a second to notice them. Maybe my mentally stable counterparts don’t fully empathize with what I’m saying here, but we’ve all had thoughts or reactions that surprised us. Ways of thinking that are irrational, confusing, or just not the types of thoughts we would like to admit that we have. And in my experience, the straight up foul cruelty we dish out to ourselves and others really takes a toll. 

It’s so normalized, we don’t even react anymore. How many times a day do you call yourself names? It’s not always so obvious. That split second walking by a mirror and thinking about your body shape. Stuttering over that one word and beating yourself up about it. Or maybe you hide behind a veil of hyper ego, spitting those jabs at others, or a fun flirty mixed cocktail of both. Our brains are smart; we hide the self-hatred, but it’s still there. That millisecond of self hate is still a punch we force ourselves to endure all the time. So, what’s the solution? 

We have to remind ourselves that those thoughts aren’t who we are. There’s a reason they’re coming to us, but they don’t define what or how we think, or who we are. Tough love isn’t real. These thoughts hurt, and we don’t acknowledge the pain. Mindfulness (and therapy, medication, etc.) helps us grab the reins, but it doesn’t magically make them go away. We need to radically change the way we think about each other and ourselves. 

The way I talk to myself about myself is crazy. Like, it’s unhealthy, harmful, and sickening! I’m noticing it more, and I definitely still do it more than I’d like to admit. How can I not? How can we live in this world and not think we are absolute pieces of shit every second of every day? We see the success of others plastered everywhere. We see beautiful rich people everywhere that make us hate ourselves (you’re not ugly btw, you’re broke). This is a hyper-judgemental world. We judge each other, we judge ourselves. I believe these two ends create a cyclical loop– one exists because of the other.

I don’t mean light a candle and buy a bullet journal when I say we need to be kinder to ourselves. I mean do the emotional work you need to do to get to a better place. Talk about your insecurities and issues rather than trying to press them down. That doesn’t work (TRUST ME) and makes it harder to stop or get any better. How deeply do we connect with what we are afraid of?

We’re all hurting and that’s okay. We’ve all hurt others and ourselves, and that’s the truth. This isn’t the type of thing that we can turn off overnight. But I know being even harder and meaner on yourself for thinking these ways is not the solution. It’s the opposite. I need to be radically nice to myself, to the point, for a cynic like me, to find repulsive. Normalizing kindness, considering myself smart, wise, beautiful, funny, amazing without any qualifiers, is radical! It’s obvious not to put up with this sort of treatment from others, but we ignore it when we do it to ourselves. Step one is simple. Just notice it. Step two and beyond…well, I’m working on it. 

So, to the man on the train, I know there’s something deeper bothering you. I hope you heal and find your peace. And the next time you curse someone out, maybe think about what’s actually bothering you.