The Trouble with Thinking

Sometimes it's dangerous to have a brain.  Especially when one cannot claim, or feign, ignorance.  That is usually my problem.  I know something but never really enough to really draw any conclusions.  Except, usually, the wrong ones.

Take, for example, my current situation with Misty.  I know that I haven't heard from her in a year now.  But I have no idea why that is the case.  I can, and have, leapt to a lot of different conclusions in the meantime.  But I don't know anything, definitely not enough to reach the conclusions I've come to.  I've been offered a lot of conclusions I supposedly could reach, based on what little I know.  But, honestly, I really don't believe that.  I don't think I know enough to actually know anything.  And it really bugs me.

Part of the problem is seriously distorted thinking patterns.  I have probably the lowest self-esteem on the planet (okay, that's an exaggeration, but my self-esteem is almost non-existent).  Mostly because I'm tired of fighting with myself over how little my value to the world is (or at least how little value I see myself as having to the world), I've started looking into cognitive therapy.  Hopefully, I'll find some answers in that to the questions I'm asking myself lately.  Then again, some of them are probably questions I cannot answer myself, purely because I am much too close to the problem.  Or, because it has been such a part of my day-to-day stuff that I really don't pay attention to it anymore.  Usually the questions of the "why" variety, honestly.  The questions that never have easy answers anyway.  Usually.  *laugh* It's interesting, though, as the more simple something is, the harder it is to explain.  Take one of the simplest of math problems, 2+2=4.  Sure, most everyone knows that 2 and 2 equals 4; but try to explain why.  You have five-hundred-thousand words and twenty years.  And the "it just is" statement isn't an explanation, it's just a means of dodging the question.  No luck?  Yeah, that's what I thought.  Complicated is easy to explain; it can be broken down into simpler ideas.  But get down to the base, the very basic elements of something, and what then?  You've got no where else to go; at it's simplest level, usually, you can only take things on faith.


This is part of the problem when dealing with the distortions in thinking that come, not only from low self-esteem, but that are doubly impacted by both ends of the bipolar spectrum.  Depressive thinking is pretty much always negative, usually to the extreme.  Manic thinking is usually positive, typically overly positive thinking.  Admittedly, in my case, even when affected by mania (or hypomania in my case; a lesser type of mania that is commonly all that affects those with Bipolar Type II), my thinking is almost purely negative.  What few positive thoughts I have, are usually undermined fairly quickly by other, much more negative, assumptions.  And, unfortunately, it's those negative assumptions that most of my thinking is built on.  And when it comes time to tear down those most fundamental building blocks and sort out what is and what isn't well-founded is very difficult.  It probably wouldn't be as bad, but I question every positive or optimistic thought that crosses my mind as being possibly overly optimistic and unfounded.  This was further reinforced by my former therapist, who often suggested (and/or warned) that positive or optimistic thoughts may very well be "mania".  Regardless of what you might hear, it's not easy to tell what is based in fact and what is based purely on emotional, and distorted, thinking.


Which is half of what I'm dealing with right now.  What is based on my own negative assumptions (possibly reinforced by others, whether knowingly or unknowingly) and what I actually "know".  Honestly, I don't know.  Especially in this mess I find myself in struggling with my own mind around, and over, Misty.  I find myself asking; did I not go to talk to her in the beginning because I knew it was over?  Or was it because I felt it was always going to happen and just assumed that's what had happened (and was reinforced by those around me; since, apparently, my therapist and family are all fairly negative people)?  Do I have enough information to actually know what happened?  To know what she wanted to do, and that this was what she wanted to do?  I suspect not.  To be honest, I think, if I'd been this clear-headed back then, I wouldn't have questioned it so much and I would have gone and talked with her.  Yes, it's always possible that leaving is what she wanted, and planned, to do.  But I just don't know.


I'd like to say I know her well enough to question a few things about that.  Primarily, I'd like to think that if she'd planned, and/or wanted, to leave, she would've said something.  Secondly, and this one's pretty big, it would require me to step beyond that and have to believe that she was lying to me before hand; especially since the last thing she told me was "I love you."  She did say it herself, first, not as a reaction to my saying it.  And, it didn't sound distant or vague either so I didn't feel that she was just saying it and didn't mean it.  Which leads me back around in a circle, obviously.  Why didn't I go after her?

Well...that's a question I can't seem to find an answer for; I don't know whether I picked up on something leading up to that, that made me believe it was over.  Or, if I'd just slapped together a bunch of stuff to make it prove that's what happened.  Honestly, assuming my recollections aren't completely skewed to see things just as I want to see them, I believe it was the second.  But, again, the only way I'm ever going to know that now would be to go and talk to her.  Which isn't exactly easy for me to face, honestly.  Not that I need to talk to her; that's something I've wanted to do for months.  But not knowing what her reaction will be does bother me; it's a huge unknown.  Truthfully, it terrifies me.  And I'm not even sure what I'm the most afraid of.  Finding out she did leave?  That she's found a new boyfriend?  Indifference?  I don't know which of those is a "worst-case" scenario for me.  And, to be completely honest, I don't know that any of them are really what brings on such panic in me.  I think it's simply the fact that I'm walking into a completely unknown situation with no idea of what to do, or say, or the faintest idea of how I should act.


All I can really say is; if there is a divine being somewhere, I really do hope they favor lovers and fools.  Because I'm going to need all the help I can get.