Compartments

I have many, and for almost everything.

My mind works in compartments, boxes, sections. And these compartments don't often intersect; they are separate, distinct. I need them to be.

I wish I thought or functioned in a more fluid, less structured way, but my mind struggles against itself in this regard. I feel only able to define this idea in extremes, imagine that. But, I may not, in actuality, function as strictly as I perceive myself to function. I am after all inside my own head.

This, my tendency, to compartmentalize, can be extremely helpful--but it can also fracture and fissure my mind, my life.

It's sometimes good and necessary to section things off, put something over there or over here, but other times it pulls and pressures, and artificially separates.

And sometimes, it gives one the illusion that something doesn't exist if you've put it somewhere that you can't see it or feel it. But, it does.

I found one of those compartments last night. I thought because I had sectioned it off, put it away, closed my mind to it, that it didn't exist anymore, but it does, and it's painful.

It was a frustrating realization that my compartmentalization had failed me. That my safety mechanism had proven faulty.

But, the reality is I can't simply section something off and not deal with its contents, fully.

This a bit of a painful revelation. But, I want to be whole. I want all of my disparate compartments to be reconciled, somehow.

As a wise woman once told me, "you can't control what you think, but you can control what you do with what you think." This is good advice.

I cannot change how my brain functions, but I can learn to work within my framework, attempting to reconcile the parts and pieces I would sometimes rather keep separate, or even pretend don't exist.

I must learn to face my realities, all of them.