I
‘ve reached the sobering conclusion that it’s better to think with your head than with your heart, for when you let your heart take control, it often runs amok, leaving your head, your sanity and possibly your credibility in a ditch somewhere. When you let your heart take control – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that when you allow your mind to cede control, you do stupid things that you never imagined you were capable of doing. And of course, you don’t necessarily realize what you’ve done until you have that lightning bolt moment of clarity, where you suddenly wake up on the far side of a nightmare and can’t quite believe you allowed yourself – even if only briefly – to behave that way, to completely lose control and turn into something that truly disappoints and mortifies you. By then, it’s usually too late because the damage is done. This damage is, quite possibly, irrevocable, as I think it’s much harder – if not impossible – to change someone’s impression of you once you’ve made a mess of things than to shape that important initial impression.
It haunts you, because you can’t comprehend how you unwittingly allowed yourself to turn into that person; you don’t understand how you couldn’t see at the time that you were hurtling down such a destructive path. You feel embarrassed as you suddenly realize how others must have seen you, and you are ashamed. You wonder which of these people is the real you, and it scares you to consider the possibility that it’s the disappointing you, the one who sunk below your usual self-defined personal standards. More than anything, you want to banish that part of you and prove you aren’t that person. The question is, can you? Should you try? Can the other you repair the damage?
