In Two Minds

I have always loved “The Lady in the Van.” That Maggie Smith starred in it might have played a big part, but I loved how the story was told. The first time I saw the movie, I caught it on TV, and it was already halfway through, but it immediately grabbed my attention. The story revolves around Alan Bennett, a writer who moved to Camden, and Mary Shepherd, a peculiar homeless woman living in a van. Alan has philosophical discussions with what seemed to me, at first glance, to be his twin, one musing on the current situation, the other playing the devil's advocate. I have watched the movie several times since, and I know that it is all in his head; what seems like the twins disagreeing is him being in two minds about the situation at hand. I will not ruin it for you if you haven’t watched it, but I hope you get my point.

I suppose another way is often portrayed is by showing the good angel and the devil on a person’s shoulders whispering into the ear while they decide. The same idea as having two wolves inside a metaphor, and one needing to decide which one to feed. Usually, I find that my biggest battles are between what I should do and what I want to do. These are the situations where people ask me if I didn’t see the red flags, and to be honest, I had seen them, but sometimes I feel like choosing the wrong thing because it is what I want to do.

Should I see that man again? He is not what I want or need, and he may be holding me back from finding the right person for me. I know that what I should be doing is saying no, but I just want to say yes. That is when the “oh, well. We can live a little” comes to mind, and fully knowing that the thrill is temporary, I decide to just go with it. I should say no because he lies unnecessarily, often, and poorly, leaving no doubt in my head that there is no future in any of this. But I want to say yes because I feel lonely sometimes, and I want someone to hold me and tell me that they missed me and tell me that I am beautiful and smart, and they can’t help themselves around me. The situation is not what I want because it lacks permanence, but the reason I continue with it is that it does give me some of the things that I need. I go and I do feel great in the moment. The next day comes, and my inner critic comes out and punishes me for being weak and allowing myself to be swayed, but while the voice of reason tells me I should not go again, I know full well that I do want to, and I will most likely see him again.

Sometimes, I can see how a person is treating me, and at first, I get upset. Then I start to wonder if maybe I might have misinterpreted the situation, maybe I have been too sensitive, and I should give that person a bit of credit because maybe they didn’t mean it that way. I do like to see the good in people and believe that they wouldn’t hurt me on purpose. In most cases, I am right, but there are also those situations where people showed me exactly who they were from the start, and I chose to idealise them or give them too much credit. These situations tend to have the same pattern. I see what is happening, but I assume that I am wrong. The situation repeats itself until I accept that it is not I exaggerating, and I try to address it and get some explanation, but the behaviour persists. I then go to phase three, and I treat them the same way that they treat me. I figure that treating you like I want to be treated has led to disappointment on my part. I assume that you must have been doing the same, so if I treat you like you treat me, then we will have a better interaction. Imagine my surprise when people start to feel insulted and upset by being treated in this new fashion. Interesting because it was perfectly alright when it was being done to me. I would never hurt anyone, but I do indulge my petty side, and I feel that some people can’t empathise until it happens to them. Even then, I start to feel bad because I have been petty, and it is not the person that I want to be. I also feel stupid because I allowed things to get this way. The worst part, though, is when people start to weigh in and suggest that I should try to contact the person and try to explain what happened and how I felt and attempt to repair the situation, that maybe the other person was not aware of their effect on me. This upsets me because I don’t think they realise how long I go back and forth and analyse what is intuition, what is a logical deduction, and what is just me being paranoid and jumping to conclusions. If I decide to cut somebody off, I set a clear boundary because I have concluded that they knew exactly what they were doing, while they were doing it, and they chose to act as they did.

I spend so much time overthinking and weighing everything, trying to make the best decision and find the best way to be. In this journey, I have had to change my patterns and behaviours many times, but sometimes it feels like running blind in traffic. I realise what I do wrong, and then sometimes I overcorrect, and I realise I have gone the complete opposite, but I don’t feel like it is serving me or when I hear myself saying it aloud, it just rings false and doesn’t quite sit right with me. I spend a lot of time walking and talking to myself. I have full conversations thinking of a topic and then telling myself that I am being stupid, and I always get it wrong. I then tell myself that I should be kinder to myself and dive back into overthinking. I have some favourite topics that I go back to so realistically, no matter where I am, I am never bored. One of those topics is “How do you give without expectation but still ask what you want?” I have turned this over in my head for ages, and it seems quite a contradiction at first. If I offer advice or give you my time, there is some expectation that you will be available to listen to my problems or you will be available for me when I need to, and that to me is an equal relationship as it is based on reciprocity. If you only listen to my problems all the time but do not share yours, it means that somewhere down the line, I have given you a reason not to trust me. I kept thinking about it for two months and trying to find the middle ground in this situation I came to the realisation that whenever I sent a text to someone to meet up, I would start to already think about what the other person is going to say, their enthusiasm about making it happen, how great it would be whenever we are out and how much fun we are going to have. In my head, I already lived the experience, and if reality does not match my expectations, I feel very disappointed and hurt. I never expect people to drop everything just because I want to talk, or I want to go out, but because I built it up in my head so much, I essentially hurt my own feelings. The first part is trying to stay in the moment and not anticipate anything, to just think that it would be nice if we went somewhere, but if the other person can’t make it, then it is alright. The second part of it is making sure that I set better boundaries and get the respect that is required to make it a healthy relationship. If the other person doesn’t make any effort or insists on mistreating me, it is alright for me to give up on people and choose people who choose me.

We find things on social media sometimes and some of them seem insightful and they create these a-ha moments that help me progress but there was this one time when I saw this video that said about healing on your own, without needing the person that hurt you to acknowledge your feelings and that karma will take care of things and the universe will right itself and nothing would go unpunished. Two more scrolls, and here is a person saying how people relying on karma are just weak and that thinking that the universe would solve everything is just them not admitting that they are unable to get back at the person who wronged them. I then read Jay Shetty’s 8 Rules of Love, and he says that Karma is more about the mindset we are in when we decide on an action. If we make a choice, then karma is a reaction to that choice, and it is a tool that teaches you to make better decisions in the future, rather than a simple if I do bad, bad will come to me or if I do good, good will come to me. Same concept, but there are three different interpretations of it, just from what I can remember off the top of my head. More confusing still, when people talk about manifesting things and wanting things. They say you should set your intentions, and you should have it clear in your head what you want to achieve. Act as if the things you want are already a part of your reality, but you should also be detached from the result and not try to force it into existence, because you might get the opposite of what you want. If it doesn’t happen, there are instances when people say that you must not have wanted it hard enough, and that is why it didn’t come to you. To me, all of those seem to be quite conflictual statements. I concluded that if I want something, I should take steps towards it, which is the set intentions part and act. The act like it already exists is more the idea that you can bring it into existence if you believe that it is possible, and while it has a place in your mind and it already lives there, it is easier to bring it into this world as a fully developed concept. The nonattachment part to me became the idea that sometimes, no matter how much you try, some things are not meant for you, and it is alright to let them go when they don’t serve you anymore.

I have always liked to ask opinions from my friends whenever I am thinking of something. On the one hand, if I say it to them, it helps map an issue in my head so it is very clear what data points I am working with in deciding on the other, it may be that my friends have similar situations that they have been through then they can give me some insight so I can speed up the process.  The problems start when people at the same table start contradicting each other in the advice they give me, so instead of clarity, I now have more things to overthink. Even worse is when people start judging and they offer advice, quite aggressively sometimes and tell me what I should do when I know full well that they don’t live by the words that they are preaching. In the beginning, this made life very hard for me because I spent hours agonising and considering if each person was right, but what I found is that it is best to be more exclusive with the circle of people that I share my worries with. I have advisors in people that take the time to fully understand what I am going through and want to understand my thought process and limitations. No advice can be universally applied, I feel. I can get a piece of advice that sounds good, but I may lack the skills that the person giving it had when completing the assignment. There will be people who, when I try to explain why something is not practical for me then they start to roll their eyes at me and consider me difficult. I am not trying to be difficult; I am trying to be realistic.

When it comes to personal growth, change is hard. I am trying to shift patterns and ideas that have been with me for years. There are defence mechanisms that my subconscious had in place, and for good reason, despite them not being healthy ones, they have served a purpose. Now, I am trying to fight everything I know and make healthier choices, but sometimes they feel more uncomfortable at the start than making the wrong choice. Doing the right thing all the time can be mentally exhausting, and it requires me to keep my emotional balance at all times, so there will be situations where I slip back into my old ways. I have had people dismiss me to my face in such a situation, and all that it accomplished was that it made me feel bad about myself. It is a matter of accepting that there is no silver bullet in these situations and that I have to take things slowly. Maybe there will be slip-ups ups but at the end of the day, I am human, and it is alright for me to make mistakes and have moments of weakness. What should never happen is for me to fully revert to my bad habits that got me to being utterly depressed. How am I to decide who I am and what I am to become if I don’t test things out? How will I ever know what feeling fine feels like in the body if I never felt it before? How am I ever to make any progress if the fear of making a mistake and the shame of being judged keep me in a place where I just overthink things to death without making a move?

My subconscious takes in data all the time, and my thoughts are reports being generated and submitted for analysis. My analytical mind then takes over and starts considering scenarios and putting together an action plan. Sometimes what my heart wants goes against what my heart wants to do, and that is where the being in two minds starts. Going through the process, though, I did find that things are easing up with all the little tweaks and course corrections that I have been making. I am starting to align more with the person that I want to be and the life that I want to live. The way forward is for me to accept my thoughts and select the same way that I choose the perfect outfit to wear, or that perfect piece of furniture that will just bring the room together and make it the centrepiece of my mindset. With the right people around me to help me when I am struggling with my inner conflict, with compassion and kindness, with the acceptance that I don’t know everything and no matter how much I try, I can’t control the outcome, I can go past any indecision and achieve everything that I set out to achieve.