Swings & Roundabouts

Good evening ladies and gentleman

I choose to believe we all have “happy” places. Those places or situations, whether real or imaginary, allow us to feel comfortable, to take a step back for a breather, to re-calibrate ourselves before diving into the amalgamation of emotions and issues that modern society is forever trying to throw at us, in some attempt to lead to a sense that everything we are and everything we do has “worth.” Be that to the people around you, to the whole world and most importantly, being worth anything to ourselves. As sometimes in this strange world that has developed around in, it can feel like we are the least important person in our lives.

I should stress that i’m not saying that we should occur in incredibly selfish behaviors in which we are only interested in our own thoughts and feelings, doing as we please to who and what we like, regardless of both the physical and emotional costs to the people around us. It would have a remarkably similar effect on the way we live in my opinion, because at heart whether we like it or not, we are all “people people” in one form or another. This can be many people, or a few beautifully outstanding people.

Nonetheless, back to ignoring ourselves. It can seem gracious behavior to worry about others and put them ahead of you at all times and to some extent it is. Yet I would argue there is a limit to this “graciousness” purely for the fact i think we fear what we want and fear who we want to be sometimes, so hide it away. We convince ourselves that we have to play a character and we at times despise doing it, but persist so people will leave us alone. Yet when you do this, i think a lot of time all people want is to see them as the person they fear to show the world.

I think we like hiding sometimes, yet hate hiding at other times. This is where the problems of “mood swings” come from. We like the easy life of hiding, not bothering anyone and being “left” in peace to do our thing, while pretending to be someone that means you “fit in” as we toil on our lives behind the scenes, like we are working on a beautiful masterpiece while showing the world the paint we dropped on the canvas. Yet sometimes all we want to do is show the beautiful detailed masterpiece to the world in all of its wander.

Hence the mood swings. I’m not going to lie to you ladies and gents. I don’t fair well with the whole mood swings issue. In my experience a lower mood can leave you alone for 2 or 3 days, normally when your busy dealing with stuff like people or your job, or the weird noise an oven makes every time you turn it on. When we are concentrating on something, relevant to who you are and what you want or not, the way we feel winds up on the back burner. Not a high mood and not a low mood. Just generally not overly interested because “that noise is just so annoying.”

Yet i find when mood swings are a problem, the smallest thing can set you off for a day or so. Totally irrelevant things can hit you like a train, not knowing whether your coming or going. A perfect example from the stupidly over complex world i placed myself in would be this- last week i received a parking ticket. I remember the conversation i had with the attendant “i just went for money” etc. etc. The details are irrelevant. I had actually been doing well and in a fairly good mood, i was productive and enjoying the days that life was throwing at me. The journey was good, the goal forever closer. Then i receive this thing in the mail and BANG. Like a gunshot almost, like I’d just been punched. I haven’t spiraled like that in a very long time, but my mood swung so fast to the point of “what exactly is the point in trying if the world is going to just keep pushing back like this?” What’s worse is I sort of deserved the parking ticket, so to this day i’m not sure why i took what should be a mild inconvenience to most people, so badly.

Low moods are interesting because i think in a way, it shows how incredibly sensitive we have become to things often without even noticing. The smallest, oddest thing can bring us down, yet at the same time a conversation with a family member or just seeing someone who means so much to you can swing you the other way. Its odd, because when this fluctuates over a long period of time, even mood flashes can develop from this peculiar mental setup. Flashes of a low mood, for maybe only even 10 minutes, on the commute to work or making coffee in the morning. Nothing sets them off, they just sort of…happen. Even from just considering the needs for the next day, the errands i need to run, or problems i need to deal with, however irrelevant they feel at that particular point.This has led to a situation in which i don’t want to sleep, therefore delaying the horrible deflated sensation that inevitably comes from dealing with this problem. Even though i am fully aware that its nothing more than a mild inconvenience, nothing more than a drop in the ocean to what i hope my life to be.

Its all swings and roundabouts, to the point it can sometimes feel like we see things in a different way, depending on how we are, be that feeling good, or feeling low. A constantly spinning circle, again and again trying to find our feet and find the wonderful journey to the dreams we long for so much. Yet as we feel it coming closer, we turn the roundabout again and on goes the cycle. High and low, round and round we go in this strange circus we call life.

Do you suffer from mood swings? Do you notice when your mood swings? Do they just flash up and go- or is it consistent? How does being low affect you, in comparison to the way you feel under better circumstances?

Would love to hear from you through the usual ways.

Yours, with love as always. DR

Random motivational picture

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swings-and-roundabouts

 

 

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