Driving does something to my mind. Something that I like. I guess because my body is occupied driving the car, it frees my mind in ways that it just doesn’t get free otherwise. Driving is something that I have come to love a lot. Last year I drove over 5000 miles while on vacation...yes, that was by choice. I drove around the entire country of Ireland and then I drove all over Northern New England and the very East Coast of Upper Canada.
I drove that distance because I wanted to see the country but also because driving frees my mind...and soul.
My mind becomes like a Rubik’s cube. Each miles cause it to shift and lock into a new position momentarily and then in the next mile it shifts again. And there is no stopping it. It just continues to turn block by block creating differing vagaries of thought and idea. It is colorful, discombobulated and diverse. I can go from thinking about a person, to an idea, to a concept and then somehow magically tie the person to the concept with some sort of brilliant revelation, at least to me. You might not find it particularly insightful or brilliant but then again, I am likely not sharing all of this with you anyway.
I really do feel like I have to spare you the constant clicking into place of my mind. Mostly out of fear that you would run from my life or have me committed. I promise you that if you were able to gain unfettered access to all the thoughts my head produces you would be terrified and likely seeking friendship elsewhere.
But it is something I have come to love about myself. Something that I used to run away from with anything I could find to use to stop the incessant and unrelenting thoughts. I found a way to turn them off: copious amounts of alcohol seemed to do the trick. But in the end, it just made me wasted in all the ways that matter most. I was wasted upon myself and everyone else.
But since getting and maintaining sobriety, I have come to embrace this whole thinking thing I do. I actually enjoy it and choose to spend entire vacations alone thinking and driving and Rubik’s cubing it. I know, I know it isn’t a thing...but it is now.
For me, thinking leads to writing and writing is something that I need on a most basic level. I do it every single day in one form or another and it grants me access to parts of myself that I cannot seem to access any other way. It also builds a bridge of intimacy with all of you that I am not sure I could handle in a more direct manner. I am working on it but much prefer to share me with you in this manner rather than more directly.
On the Enneagram I am a 7. I am a thinker and then a doer. And I do this all to avoid feeling. But I am not sure that is completely true anymore. I think where I am in my soul and personal evolution is that I still prefer thinking and doing over feeling but I actually think and do to increase the thoughts about the feelings that lie somewhat dormant and stale beneath all the activity of my mind and body.
In today’s world, I am thinking and doing to engender feeling...but while I am solitary which feels so much safer than if you were present for this whole deal. Your presence makes the Rubik’s cubing of my mind somewhat self indulgent and aloof. So I tend not to engage in it unless I am solitary in either my car driving or on some hillside hiking.
There are still times when I want to escape myself. Times when I am needing to run away from me. Mostly after heartbreak. I just can’t take me and all the things I am Rubik’s cubing about you and why we aren’t together anymore. And honestly, I can say that really that has only been the one time. Just one man that I regretted the loss of so deeply that it took me a couple of years to Rubik’s cube myself into a healed and healing version.
The driving, hiking and cryking helped. And in that scenario, the Rubik’s cubing was largely aimed at getting him back...which was totally unproductive because he was fucking gone, gone. It took me years to accept that but I finally did and now can see the wisdom in his abrupt departure. It wasn’t about me. It was about him. And today I can be glad that he did what he needed to do for him even though there was another path that would have been better for both of us. Given what I know about trauma, I can see why there was no other option for him. And yes, it took me a great deal of Rubik’s cubing to get myself there.
There are many ways that my mind slips easily into this constant state of shifting and moving things around towards alignment. Sometimes the mental puzzles I create are easily resolved and all the colors fit neatly into place, organizing themselves into six colorful symmetries of cube and thought. Then there are other times that no matter how much I twist and turn, I can’t make that fucker align for shit. I guess this is where I learned you have to take the good with the bad...no exceptions.
Today, I am grateful for the days when I can lock it down and find congruence. But I also have come to love the totally fucked up Rubik’s cube where things look a mess and are completely unresolved. I know, because I am a child of the 80s that if I can’t figure out how to get it aligned eventually I can cheat and pull it apart and put it back together the old fashioned way: brick by brick. I know, I know that is cheating but sometimes that cube and my brain need an alternative strategy because I have fucked us both beyond all recognition.
For some, a Rubik’s cubing mind would be a bad thing. The constant puzzles and grind might be too much. But for me, I have come to accept it. I have come to just work with it instead of against it. This is my path and while it may not suit everyone...it works for me. For some it is driving and crying, for me it is driving and Rubik’s cubing. Hey man, whatever works, right?
Again...still.
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