Thinker. Dreamer. Lover

She is my only friend, Rosé.

Neuroscientists say that human beings require boredom in order to fire off connections in their brain that allow them a point of reflection and deeper thinking. They say being bored is good for us as it allows time for the synapses in our brain to engage in different ways than what our regular routine of human interaction and constant digital distraction allows for. There is a TedTalk all bout how being bored and not being in front of a device of some sort and allowing your brain to wonder and explore is a good thing for everyone; it promotes that everyone should give themselves some time to be bored. As if this is a problem for most people, not having the time for boredom.

My life in this world is by and large, void of human engagement. I am a lone wolf who spends too much time completely isolated and alone and therefore I don’t have a problem being bored. I am bored most of the week and especially on the weekends, which is why Sundays, I always look forward to the full experience with Rosé. She helps me drown my deepest sorrows on her welcoming shores. She brings a sense of numbness to an already hyper active mind.

I am a classic over thinker. This comes from the disturbing and dysfunctional upbringing I had being abused and tortured as a child – which from an early age meant that I was bored a lot and thus became prone to overthinking. Besides being beaten, my punishments from my stepfather included extreme and long periods of complete imprisonment and isolation. I was often sent to my room to quarantine without access to leaving for, not hours, but days. Entire weekends to be precise. I think the only reason I wasn’t chained up against a bed and left there indefinitely is because there were too many other people involved and around in my stepfathers life.

It must have started when I was about 5 or 6, after a severe beating, I was sent to my room in this fashion, to be out of the way of his life. I was not allowed to come out, not even for meals and nobody was allowed to come in, not even my mother. Also, there were no toys or any sort of distractions available to me. Everything was removed so it was a true prison cell. So, I would just wonder in my room and in my mind about everything and anything. As my nature was already precocious and highly intelligent, this led to a lot of synapses firing for extended periods of time. I don’t know what the neuroscience says about that, but I imagine my brain is used to being all lit up all the time and working off many signals constantly firing because it has had over 40 years of practice doing so.

I am genuinely waiting for the day the engine that fuels this level of activity sputters and shuts down. I think it will be my only reprieve.

Until then, I spend a lot of the weekend, if not most definitely Sundays, with Rosé. The thing is, tolerance is a bitch. She seems to have less and less of an effect each weekend that transpires as evidence of this highly prolific blog being written in her company.

Overthinking is not a characteristic of those who have led a happy and stable life and who are fortunate enough to claim a charmed existence. It is the manifestation of those of us tortured souls, who, because of our unique intelligence, sensibility or other difference in the world, are more often marginalized, discarded and ignored and thus given copious amounts of time alone.

I would say of the 14-16 waking hours that a human being spends in a day, the more you are alone and left to your own devices, given of course the right predisposition towards critical thought and preponderance, the more your brain gets a workout from thinking. I spend 10-12 of my hours each day completely remote, isolated and alone and hence average a whooping 71-75% of my time left to thinking, If my brain were the equivalent of my glutes, being the largest muscle in the body, I would have an ass of steal. Instead it is my mind that is a machine.

A organ that is so used to constantly being turned on and working, clicking away a million miles an hour like a well-oiled machine, that it often does not leave me any respite. I also have a hard time sleeping, but thanks to my friend Rosé and little help from some homeopathy, I slowly massage and ease this slick puppy of a brain into a lucid machine. Oh what vivid and creative ingenuity from my time in the dream world. I often think I could write entire screenplays based on the worlds and characters that I experience in the hours of slumber while my brain is supposedly “resting”.

Nonetheless, Monday arrives like a wet rag ready to dampen my spirits and the brightest of days. The doldrums of my existence as I am relegated into a a pattern of work, where not being sufficiently challenged to my capability and intelligence, I have nothing but more hours of boredom on the horizon.

Thus will begin another long week of deep thoughts and churning of the cogs that already operate at their highest peaks of output and efficiency. Until the next Sunday with Rosé, which is often now me calling on her on Tuesday or Wednesday as well as Thursday and Friday – anytime really when I just need a friend to help distract me from my thoughts.

Yet, she is always most helpful on Sundays.