Changes-of-mind mid-sentence

June 12, 2026: 🗓 

When I forget my reasons for doing something, and I don’t try to fill the memory gaps with made-up reasons, it’s like holding space so that the real reasons have homes when I remember them later. You never really know (or at least I don’t) which real reasons will be the ones that get you there. Wherever “there” is for you.

I forgot why I write these posts with so much information no one reads probably and I don’t actually like writing about. I remembered a reason today. I’m in some kind of pivotal thing, and I’m documenting it in real time. What I’ve written so far isn’t accurate, but it’s a demonstration of a human process with iterations and start-overs and stutters and changes-of-mind mid-sentence instead of just the refined whatever it is at the end of this rainbow.

One of the unrefined parts: feeling seething rage towards the majority of people I see as I go about my life.

This one is difficult to talk about because I don’t want to feel this way about people. If you remember the dinner scene in Requiem for a Dream with Marion and the psychiatrist, this is how I often feel when walking past another person on the street, for example (minus the fork part). It’s rage but also disgust. I almost forgot about the disgust while writing this. It’s also crushing disappointment underneath.

If someone smiles at me, I want to see their care and good intentions. Instead, it just feels taunting, even though I don’t actually think they’re taunting me.

This started 8 years ago. Actually it’s been this way as long as I can remember, but 8 years ago was the beginning of a much less indirect version (still indirect harassment, just less indirect)

Over the years, I’ve gone through different theories of what this is. For the sake of consistency, I’ll use the interpretation I had at the time it first started happening.

So 8 years ago, people started doing these nonverbal gestures around me that could easily be explained away as coincidence. Or even something like, maybe one occurrence wasn’t a coincidence, and now your brain notifies you of every occurrence because it thinks that gesture is important now.

It wasn’t just gestures, it was words and phrases. Also things like, right as a person is passing me, they make a sniffing sound. Or coughing or stomping feet. People would update the words and nonverbals over the years, which seemed to indicate, like, we’re all still updating each other on which triggers to currently use on you.

I won’t go into the story right now of why the trigger words and nonverbals felt cruel and hurtful. I actually don’t know if any of them mean anything. To me, it’s more like a constant reminder that I’m misunderstood and disliked in ways or for reasons I don’t understand or not able to comprehend, and also that there are aspects of reality people are purposely and seemingly tauntingly withholding from me.

I think some of the resulting sadness and loneliness became rage and disgust. The rage included the benefit of the increased heart rate helping me physically move one leg in front of the other while walking. I felt so heavy and weak so often.

People finally stopped a few months ago (mostly). Or maybe I finally stopped noticing it all the time. I still feel rage even without obvious triggers though. For many years, it felt shameful that I couldn’t just stop noticing. Maybe my brain was stuck in a trauma-induced pattern recognition, especially because I was socially isolated for 7 of the 8 years, so I wasn’t able to reset it with new forms of social interaction. But now I just kind of feel like, do I even have a brain? 🧠

A couple days ago, I saw a woman that did not trigger the rage, even though she did this certain facial expression at me that normally does trigger it. It makes me wonder if the rage isn’t actually a brain response, but maybe the people are the ones doing it to me. Like they somehow can flip emotional switches in me, and they do it purposely. I’ve felt emotions in the past where it did feel like a switch being flipped. Like feeling extreme fear, and the fear is then gone immediately for no reason. It feels artificial, like emotions being manufactured and transmitted.

This is a common theme in many thoughts over the years, that some people aren’t actually living the real human experience. But maybe they think they are because it’s similar on the surface. This causes them to misunderstand the real human experience because they equate it with their own.

Again, I don’t believe this is happening. I also don’t believe it’s not happening. But what it does accomplish is intensifying this general feeling of being misunderstood, which is another long-term theme in my thoughts.

Recently, this feeling finally went away. I just started feeling like there’s something that does understand, and it can’t be manipulated or taken advantage of or trapped or whatever else. And because of this, I don’t have to worry about my thoughts (or just me in general) being misinterpreted anymore.

Sometimes I forget this when I get drawn into whatever story is playing in my mind. When I intermittently remember, it allows me to distance myself from the story, like stepping back. It’s like the weight of the world is lifted off me when I remember.

It’s not only pulling myself out of the story, but also shifting perspective.

I just had an idea: instead of thinking of it as a story created to distress you, think of it as a story created to explain why this combination of metaphorical circumstances distresses you.

I also wanted to write about a concept I’m trying to understand better. I have a feeling that whatever it is in the brain that attributes a thought to the self is what gets hijacked during a specific type of intrusive thought. I just had an idea: maybe it doesn’t get hijacked, but it got replicated, and you don’t know how to use your original one to override it.

My mind demonstrated this to me recently. It played the same story for two different versions of intrusive thoughts. In one version, I was aware it was intrusive, and I didn’t think or feel like I was interacting with it. In the other version, I was aware it was intrusive, but I somehow felt like I was co-creating it even though I knew I wasn’t. It was as if it started out an intrusive thought, but then it would give me subtle prompts and pause. During the pause, it would put thoughts in me like, “oh I’m getting sucked in and now I’m participating because it’s giving me time to think about possible directions the story could go.” Then it would tell me the next action “I” was going to take in the story right before it happened, which probably contributed to me feeling like I was the one that facilitated the action and now feel responsible for what “I” did in the story.

I wonder if the human experience is having to live your life with that part of you hijacked or replicated for some reason. But some people only experience the version where it’s not hijacked, and they equate that with the human experience. So they’re totally unaware of a critical aspect.

Edit: 11:25am Pacific Time. Neuroscience says your brain shows you more of what you focus on. If I start focusing on not assigning interpretations or reasons to things I don't understand or remember, but also to things I thought I understood or accurately remembered -- so basically everything -- what is it that my brain will show me more of?
I just reread that, and it reminds me of a too-wordy riddle from Stephen King's The Dark Tower series.

Edit: 6-14-26. I basically know nothing about theology, so I don't know to specify which version of God this is about. It's a Lutheran-type Sunday Bible school. King James Bible.

I remember being in Bible study as a child, hearing story after story of God misunderstanding the humans or disappointed in the humans or trying to help the humans in a way that has the opposite effect than intended. If God made the humans in his image, why so problemy?

Maybe the two-versions-of-intrusive-thoughts idea is like a metaphor of why God misunderstands the humans. Humans experience the version where whatever it is that attributes a thought to the self gets hijacked or replicated, but God only experiences the version where it doesn't. So God asks the angels to help. So the angels go to earth and inhabit a human body without the human being aware. But the angel can't detect the hijacking or replication from this angle.

Also, what if the Bible's version of God is actually an angel or group of angels inhabiting God's body without God's knowledge. Maybe the angels are the ones meddling in human affairs in an attempt to help, disguised as God, because the angels think they have to do this to prevent something terrible, because these particular angels aren't aware of what's really going on (because other angels are withholding reality from these angels).