What's on your mind?

“What’s on your mind?” sounding like a rhetorical Question.

Like one of those, how are you’s that 9 out of 10 people never actually respond to.

They just say “how are you” right back.

Cue confused look on my face.

I had to give myself time to process this…

“What–what do you mean?” I said aloud in a half whisper…

‘What the shit do I pay you for’…followed by an

‘oh yea, that’s right, I don’t pay you’ Is what i actually meant to say. I

“What’s on your mind?”

I had decided I’d answer myself that question. But only that one, because if i answer anymore questions, this is going to be considered a debate and I don’t have the energy or the time to contemplate how I’m going to annihilate my own ego.

My mind is a whirlpool of obsessive thoughts, sprinkled in glitter, dipped in a paranoia equivalent to what that reefer madness did for the war on drugs.

Whats on it?

Whats on it !?

Does anyone else hear this guy?

Crickets.

O.k

I guess not.

Sometimes I feel like I’m talking to a wall, a pixellated wall, but a wall nonetheless.

“What-is-on-your-mind?”

The words vibrated in black and blue like I had a case of synesthesia

Tasting the words, chewing the syllables

feeling every question mark like that first ass whooping your parents gave you.

Or

for those who got a “good talking to” that first “i’m disappointed“

Either way it seemed like you couldn’t catch your breath no matter how hard you tried.

Do you really want to know what’s on my mind?

Endless corridors, behind each door lay why’s, what if’s.

Doubts…

Echos of unsaid words

Obsessive words

Words repeating in patterns. Coming and going like an oceans wave on a full moons night.

All giving energy to a green monster,
and depleting whatever was left of my mind, because you and I both know, what was left wasn’t much to begin with, anyway.

A labyrinth unfolded behind every why and what if, like twigs, leaves and branches seamlessly connecting to a thick tree trunk, down into the roots grounding itself into the old earth.

The further into each “why” only left me with less space to breathe.

Less space to think.

I felt my inner self pacing

I need to breathe

5-4-3-2-1

I need to breathe, but its so hard.

Much like walking into a tapering tunnel, your walking space becomes a crawling space, and soon your chest is pinned against the floor.

Push me back or pulling me out are my only options, i’ve come this far.

I lay drowning in myself,

as if i was the rain this tree consumed to live, i trekked far into the anatomy of what that tree was and in turn fed it.

Whether I fed it clean water or dirty water, it didn’t know, the tree simply consumed, happy to take in whatever was given. Thankful even.

Just when I thought I couldn’t breathe having gotten to the end of this hypothetical branch,

a wavering green leaf erupts from a minuscule twig.

One frail, positive thought among the pouring rain of doubt.

That,

If I drown, at least my cup was half full.

Talk about optimistic thoughts planting a healthy seed.

And indeed a seed was planted.

Feeding the doubt only fed the monster in my mind.

The tree was me,

And what I fed myself, was most certainly what I became.

My mind and what was on it were dependent on what was behind these doors.

It became clear to me that,

when I opened one of these doors, from the echoing corridors I mentioned earlier, I became the water that fed the tree, the catalyst behind the pestering fear I thought I didn’t understand.

I learned to water myself with only ideas and thoughts that served me well, like grapes on the vine brought to me in a golden bowl

I became my only savior,

my only hero.

Behind every door lied a labyrinth of a thousand ideas that didn’t serve me

and I locked them away until they starved.

In their place I planted bright green seeds whose roots grew to embrace the earth, the same earth that gave thunderstorm to those unapologetic waters that fed my seeds of thought.

Working like a bee pollinating a flower and less like a parasite in your intestines

a mutualistic relationship

Each getting from one another exactly what was needed

So when asked once more

What’s on your mind

my response became.

“Do you really want to know? it's a lot to unfold“

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