Dear Mind…..

4 min readAug 16, 2024

Firstly, I thank you for holding me strong in this world for the past 29 years. I have seen so many different colors of you, some darker than the others, and I have truly come to fall in love with all of them, all the while knowing there are many I’m yet to find.

I have watched you evolve subtly with every conversation, every book, every situation, every new idea and while I might not notice this on most days, today I do. I see how far our friendship has come.

Do you remember the days when I was just a teenager?

I would constantly play out scenarios & fantasies until they became my reality (still sometimes do!). What if my crush fell in love with me? What would our lives look like? Maybe, we would sneak out of school together and go on dates every day. Maybe, he is in love with me.

I would constantly overthink and then overthink about overthinking. Maybe, I could have said that better. Maybe, they think this of me because I said that. Maybe, I am the way they think of me. Why did I say that? What if they stop talking to me because I said that? Why am I thinking like this? Am I an overthinker? Do other people also think like this?

I would zoom into the fear & darkness and zoom out on the rays of peace & light in between. My nightmares fueled by my fears greeted me every other night. I vividly remember the nightmare I had for many years where I get stuck in an endless revolving loop akin to a tornado within the fabric of a curtain and a ghost consumes me within this tornado but I keep revolving with the ghost uncontrollably. This nightmare had me dreading sleep.

At times, I thought I was the fear & darkness and there was nothing I could do about it. I didn’t understand you at all. I thought every dark thought, every nightmare, every fantasy, everything was me and if people found out, they would never accept me.

The darkest corner I explored with you was the time I heard the news that a famous musician had committed suicide and I made that my story until I harbored the thought of committing suicide every single second of every day.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all the amazing times we had too! Most of these times “coincidentally” happened when you were talking to my heart and you both decided together that I deserved to have a good time!

Then our story had a twist.

I began to see you as one of my many caretakers and somewhere along this journey, we became friends. We began to get to know each other, most importantly, I started to get to know YOU.

I began to see your workings and my own role in those workings.

I see why you replay so many of the same thoughts, it’s the only way you’ve known to live. You go from analyzing the past from so many different perspectives to imagining the future, finding any escape from the present.

I see how sometimes you seek distraction when we find moments of stillness, how you crave the dopamine from the phone just to relieve the itch.

I see how you can hold onto fear for new & challenging activities/situations and make it so big that it actually becomes my physiological & psychological reality.

I created this reality for you.

From the place of my comfort, I add fuel to these very habits and continue to loathe you for them too. I encourage these very patterns then get frustrated at you.

I turn a page of another book which tells me “Your thoughts create your reality” then ask you to create better thoughts for me — AS IF it’s that easy for you!

Quite honestly……I just want to apologize.

I apologize for all that I’ve put you through. I apologize for all the far fetched demands I’ve made, all the anger I’ve thrown your way & all the shortcuts I’ve been wanting to take.

I am so deeply grateful for how far we’ve come together and this was only possible because you and I together decided that this was not going to be our reality and put our will to action to create a new one.

Look where we are today! I’d even call you my BFF because you know everything there is to know about me and through it all, you continue to motivate me to do better, to be better.

I am so grateful that you continue to work with me through showing me how you essentially work. All this while you knew me but I knew nothing about you.

I know our friendship will see many phases, many colors and ride many many tides together but we will only emerge stronger, of that I’m sure.

My heart is so full of gratitude for you. Thank you for all that you were, all that you are and all that you will ever be.

Yours truly & deeply,

Your BFF ;)

(I wrote this as I sat down to write and continued to do 2–3 other things like looking at my phone & writing in my journal which suddenly made me reflect on how could I possibly demand presence in my creative space from my mind if I continue to harbor my own distractive habits — in this moment, I felt a wave of empathy for my poor mind!)