“Pretty much, yeah! It’s also good for stress.”
“Is that another reason you do it?” she asks in a whisper.
I feel myself gawking at her unintentionally. It has been a long time since anyone asked me about my stress.
“I’m sorry, I know you don’t like to share. You don’t have to answer,” she says quickly.
“No, it’s okay.” I bite my lip and click my pen a few times.
Not only are the doodles shorthand, they are my thoughts—doodled thoughts. Thoughts I am too scared to voice out loud, or accept are actually coming from my brain sometimes. They’re not all bad, but when they are, the doodling is a way to put the intrusive things out there—without anyone knowing how bad they are.
Sometimes my thoughts can be hard to digest, even for myself. The scary thing about our brains and its intrusive thoughts are we don’t know which thoughts will leave a lasting impression. I learned early on that something I could do to combat those dark thoughts was to create a tangible way to get rid of them. We hear about people writing letters to those they are angry at then burning them in some symbolic fashion. My doodles are like an angry letter to my brain, and instead of burning them, I doodle on sticky notes and throw them in the trash.
I decide to be brave. “I feel more at peace with my thoughts when I doodle them.”
“Hey, that’s great! Multipurpose doodles!”
“Exactly, it’s fascinating what these little doodles do for the brain.”
“Brain empowering!”
I laugh. “Definitely!”
“With how much you doodle, you probably have an Einstein-level IQ!”
We both giggle and Kate begins discussing the party planning to-do list. Is it just me or are the people here at Glendale overly nice and accepting? It has been a long time since I’ve felt any sense of peace around other people—specifically people who may not have mental struggles like I do. More times than not, I encounter someone who denies their own struggles or has zero interest in me sharing about mine. The stigma surrounding mental health is toxic and creates an involuntary barrier around my heart. My doodle statistics and how they help me combat my own issues are something very close to my heart and I was slowly starting to feel safe enough to share them.
“So we have two weeks until the party and you have yet to commit to a costume! Are we going as Thing 1 and 2 or what?” Kate looks at me, all business.
“Is that my only option?” I suppress the disgust that is surely creeping across my face.
I have a hunch I will be required to paint my hair blue and I am not a fan.
“That, or you dress up by yourself! I can get Malcolm to be Thing 2 no problem. I just wanted to give you the option to do it with me.”
“How will you get him to dress up?” I smirk at her.
“Like this . . .” She proceeds to form tears in her eyes and look at me like I just ran over her puppy.
“Wow, bravo!” I applaud her.
“Thank you, thank you!” She gives a bow. “But seriously, do you have any ideas on what you want to be yet?”
“Not really.” My mind flashes with a montage of past Halloweens—my attempts to do couples costumes and Liam refusing. Him making me fight back angry tears as he blabbers on about his disdain for the holiday and anything that resembles pumpkins.
As if she can read my mind Kate says, “He can’t ruin this holiday for you anymore.”
“I know.” I pause and look out the window. Orange and yellow leaves are falling from the trees—the wind blowing and rustling them into sporadic piles over the school parking lot. “It’s just hard to convince your brain things will be different after enduring the same experience repeatedly. Our brains predict what is going to happen based on repeated stimuli. It takes these perceptions and sets behaviors in motion based on what has happened in the past.”
I stop, realizing this might not be a very fun topic for Kate. Her mantra was practicallyLive, Laugh, Loveand my over-analytical brain was sure to put a damper on that.
“I’m sorry, this is such a boring conversation.” I force a laugh.
“Not at all, keep going,” she encourages.
“Essentially, when our brain experiences a repeated stressful event, it assumes that event will continue happening. Even if it hasn’t happened in years. So for me”—I take a deep breath—“my brain correlates this time of year with the parts of a past relationship that were less than ideal.”
“Like . . . PTSD?” she whispers the question like it's a secret.
