The most dangerous thing in life…

For me the most dangerous thing in my life is my brain.

My brain has got me far in my life. I like to think of myself as pretty intelligent. But yet I would definitely class it as my worst enemy.

My brain can cause me to have the worst of dreams, the darkest of thoughts, the ideas that keep me up for days at a time. Not just the usual human thoughts of “what if”, or day dreams of a better future. Instead my head torments me with self loathe, irrational fear (usually linked to just insecurities about myself), or the worst one of all – hope. There is nothing worse in life than hope.

The thoughts process of “what if ” generally can be quite fun. What if I won the lottery. What if I changed jobs, or moved house to this area. But as always with a depressive mind it never stays fun. It soon turns into what if I didn’t say those things, what if I had done things differently, what if I wasn’t here. I think these come more from insecurities about oneself. I guess most people (damaged or not) question their past, and what would have happened if they had or hadn’t done certain things. I know I do it almost daily. That isn’t to say that I’m not happy or content with how my life is now, instead more the wonder of how I could have done better in life generally. Don’t get me wrong the darker thoughts are always the more prominent. The whole what if I had have tried that little bit harder with my suicide attempts, what if my son had never have been born (pretty much the only thing that’s kept me going the last few years).

Hope it’s the nasty one though. Nothing is more dangerous. Hope things get better. Hope that illness will go. Hope my head will get better one day. Hope gives a false illusion that life has a happy ending like movies. I think there needs to be clear definition between hope and faith. Having faith I see as necessary part of life, but shouldn’t be mixed with hope. I life the idea that so many put their faith in their religion, the faith of eternal happiness following death. It’s a much nicer option than the reality of rotting in the ground and soon forgotten about. But hope it’s a state of mind that makes you believe that something will change. That’s the lie that will ruin you.

This all started with a bad dream. The usual bad dream of being cheated on, or left, or the world being against me (which it isn’t). That was followed by the remainder of the night questioning, myself, my past decisions, my self worth, things beyond my control. And I can live with these thoughts quite happily. I’d much prefer questioning myself or things I can’t control instead of the path my head usually goes down, the old “it would be better if I wasn’t here” route.

Over time I’ve done a lot better at controlling the thoughts I really don’t want to have. I said better, far from perfect. I think this stems from having regular thoughts and dreams of my son dying. This used to be daily. This used to make me completely break down. But I learned to shake that thought away as soon as it came in before it made me crumble. So I’ve used that to get past many of the bad thoughts, but as I said, it’s still far from perfect. It doesn’t stop them all.