Today's demon to be exorcised: Obsession. I've touched on it before, and like most things, I'll probably talk it into the ground before I purge myself of it. But, here we go again.
ob·ses·sion/əbˈseSHən/
| Noun: |
| |
| Synonyms: |
mania
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In writing, the best thing you can do for your protagonist is to give them an obsession. If they have an obsession, then they have something that drives them. If they have something driving them, then you, as the writer, have a plot and a character worth reading.
This isn't the best way to look at real life, though. In real life, if your character...(again, a distancing mechanism)...if you have an obsession, that obsession will drive your actions and thoughts, just like it would a character, but unlike in fiction, (where the plot is interesting but safe because it's distant, because it isn't real) in real life obsession can destroy us.
My obsession, as scary as it is to lay it out here in black and white, is the past.
The past is a silly thing to be obsessed with:
-It's already happened.
-It can't really be revisited, except in memory.
-It can't be changed.
-It can't actually effect the present.., unless you react to it in the present.
Yet, despite all of these facts, I easily get obsessed with things that have happened. Things in my life, in my husband's life, in our past together, in my friends' lives, in my families' lives...it's a wide range thing.
My husband tells me that I have the most active imagination of any adult he knows. I take this is as a huge compliment (even if he says this after he jumps around a corner to scare me, and I scream and cower in the bathroom floor because we watched a movie the night before that had terrible CGI zombies in it, and I assume they've broken into our house). Having a vivid imagination, for a writer, is vital.
Having a vivid imagination is wonderful...until you start imagining things that happened, or may have happened, or could've happened, in the past that hurt you in some way...needless to say, these are generally things that I hope didn't happen, or things that, if I know they did happen, I don't want to think about.
This is where my obsession really doesn't make sense. I think about the past a lot...I hyper-focus on characters (not people, because the people that I'm thinking of probably aren't anything like how I imagine them) from the past until that imagined scenario becomes real. I hyper-focus on scenarios, on plots, so much that they become what really happened. All of these things are things I would rather choose not to think about, yet I think about them more than almost anything. A synonym for obsession is mania...I focus on these things in a manic way that doesn't make sense. I have an amazing husband, a wonderful family, awesome friends, and I focus on kind of crummy real and imagined past events instead of living in the now and appreciating these beautiful things...
I'm sorry to say I don't have a big conclusion or moral for this blog...rather, I just needed to get it OUT. I needed to purge this secret (or maybe it's not so secret?) from my mind. What better place than online, where anyone could read it and judge me for it. I don't really care if people judge me for it...but maybe, if I get it out there where people can see it, I'll be able to distance myself from it a little.
Maybe I can let myself heal from all of these real and imagined wounds from the past.
Maybe I can let myself forget the characters that regularly show up in my manic-brain and make the version of me that lives in my imagination feel like she's worth nothing.
Maybe, by laying all this out there, I can exorcize this demon and, for a whole day, or week, or for the rest of my life, be able to live without these characters, these plots, these past ghosts, haunting me like shadows.
All these things you write about are related. They’re individual pearls that collectively form a necklace, but that necklace is choking life out of you. I feel I can say this because I am just like you in these thoughts and feelings. I’m learning that DAILY I have to shut down the thoughts the moment they start (2 Cor 10:15.) I usually picture a stop sign in my head, or remind myself how this is going to end if I continue the thought processes (fight with my husband, panic attack, feeling like a complete muppet, etc.) I have learned what the “triggers” are that bring these processes on (certain songs, times of day, certain people, etc.) and if at all possible I avoid these triggers (James 4:7.) Last week we were hit from all sides and it was crisis time. Last night hubby and I were talking about the week and just getting it all out and I realized that during the crisis with our children I never once thought about the past, the ex, the family, etc. In that I understood that when push comes to shove I am able to go without thinking about those things and focus on the here and now, and what’s truly important and the whole thing: I didn’t miss thinking about that rubbish and having a break down over things I can’t change, fix, or erase! It was NICE not thinking about it for once (not that I liked the crisis either, but you get my drift.) And I still feel today that I don’t have to think about those things, I don’t want to think about those things because the peace I’ve had from not thinking about them is so wonderful! I get Philippians 4:8 a little better now – think on things that are worthy of time and attention…I’m not trying to be simplistic, but it really is simple in terms of how to make it all stop…you just have to DO IT. I think sometimes I’m waiting for a magic wand or an instant cure-all solution rather than accepting that the only way to stop thinking badly is to do just that: stop thinking on it, resist the temptations, and focus on what matters. Hard stuff but worth it for peace of mind.
ReplyDeleteLaine - Everything you're saying makes complete sense to me. My dad told me that when he and mom first got married, they struggled with her jealousy/issues a lot, too. And what she finally had to do was just make herself not think about those things every time they cropped up. I asked her about it, and she said the more she stopped herself, the less often they popped into her head. Dad said, "Imagine it's a movie, and whenever you start to think that way, hit STOP, EJECT, and throw the DVD into the trash." Or "Imagine it's in a room, and you walk firmly out of that room and slam the door, then lock it." The stop sign image works too. I've decided that I have to do things, symbolic for me, to help me. A few weeks ago, I took an old journal I was secretly using to badmouth myself (I kind of thought of it as emotional-self-mutilation. Creepy, huh?) and ripped out every self-maligning page, then shredded them, showed my husband, and trashed them. I kept the good pages and trashed the bad.
DeleteI find, too, that when I'm faced with something ACTUALLY important, these neuroses vanish.
Like with your family emergency...maybe these events (even the bad ones) can be used to snap us into reality long enough to reevaluate these issues, and work on them.
Thanks for always reading, and for talking things out with me. It means a lot, and maybe we can work through our issues together!
No problem Linz. It also helps that Ben is very supportive in this area. About 3 years ago, I made wallet sized laminated print outs of a stop sign. I have one on my dash board, in my church bag, in my school bag, various places around the house...because I never know when those thoughts are going to start and as soon as they do I look at my stop sign and it really helps!
ReplyDelete