What Are You Thinking About?

People ask me that sometimes - "What are you thinking about?"  will come the question.  "Nothing" comes the response.  And I mean that - a lot of the time I simply have no thoughts in my head  It is not that I do not have anything to think about but rather that I have apparently trained myself, especially due to years of long commutes, to simply tune out thought and simply be.

That can be difficult to explain to people.

The question - and it is a legitimate one - is if I also use that as an excuse to avoid thinking about and dealing about situations I do not want to discuss.

It is convenient, of course:  "Nothing"  becomes the excuse for not talking about something not because you have nothing to say but because you do not want to say it either from concern about what will happen or simply because it sounds rough and perhaps even hurtful.  And perhaps I begin to play a mind game on myself with this: by giving myself the excuse to say I do not think anything at all about it I do not actively consider it when perhaps I should.

Sometimes I feel - especially lately - like there is a large stopper between my heart and my mouth, a sort of physical block that prevents me from saying things, perhaps things that need to be said or should be said.

It needs to be resolved, of course - because the large block that continues to hold back pressure will eventually rupture, with results far worse than any sort of controlled release would ever be.