Biggus Bloggus

Why I need sibling counselling

I'm caught between the grip of two insatiable creatures. They're gooey, you don't want to so much as poke at them, as they pulse. But they're inside of all of us. Literally. I'm just talking about the brain. But like... the two halves of a brain that everyone "knows" are two different beings entirely, conjoined by carbon matter and whatever else a brain is made up of. Anyways, there's the left and right brain, the nerd and the guy who likes Oreos and kitty cats. I don't usually confuse my lefts and rights, but I recently saw a personality quiz that said the left brain was the nerd and somehow that doesn't add up to me. Maybe because there's an old notion that left-handed people are more creative. Or because the 'R' sound is harsher than the 'L' sound and is thus the bigger pain in the ass. Either way, we all know of that distinction between the left and right, whether it's based in fact or not.

So, there are these two halves, the forbidden wolves inside of me or whatever. The left is very:

And the right side of my brain is kinda:

Dichotomies in the personality space are a sham, honestly. Everyone's a bit of both, right? A bit of an introvert, a bit of an extrovert; a bit of a left-brain, a bit of a right-brain; a bit of salt, a bit of pepper. So my problem is pretty universal, all things considered. Still, it's an anguish worth writing about.

I want stability and I often rely solely on myself to try and achieve it. It's not because I lack help! I reckon it's an ego thing, a general distrust that anyone else can do the task, or shame in making someone do my work for me. I moved out of my student housing last weekend and that was probably one of the most stressful times of this year because I insisted on handling 90% of it myself. My family doesn't have a car, so they had to come over and help me carry my suitcases onto the bus. Very cheap, £2 a single ticket for a 2 hour ride, but very physically taxing. The worst part was how much I hated that my family felt they had to do this for me. I kick myself because I know the simple solution would've been to plan ahead and make smaller trips on my own over time. That's one of my problems, I desire stability and romanticise the planning process in everything else but it's like a doomed love; you only like the idea of it. Pretty checklists with heart-shaped tick boxes, colour coded planner spreads, palettes and washi tapes and stickers. Even beyond that, the act of planning for things does something to my brain, even though I end up not following through.

Then there's the other side of my brain who's nothing but romantic. Everything falls into place when it's time, that kind of thinking. Very helpful, I used to add so many details to my OCs I never got anything done with them, but nowadays any details I come up with turn out to accidentally have a deeper meaning or... Just work, so I've come to trust my intuition with my creative pursuits more. I've also come to love human error: ink that skips and smudges, asymmetrical eyebrows, grammatical inaccuracy for the sake of dramatic effect, colours that bleed outside of their lines. There was a Brian Eno quote that stuck with me, about how we come to appreciate signs of a medium's absolute limits. By this, I mean the noise of a vinyl, or the vocal strain of a singer. Bad tattoos on leather-tan skin (Charli XCX, 2024). It's with this brain I live with so much happiness with the state of the world around me. Unfortunately, because it's also highly unstable, I really can't rely on it, and it's also the reason why I can't fully commit to routine.

I need something new to bring the two sides back together, a new planning method or something or other, because I'm just so fatigued by the pull. I want there to be a symbiosis, where the smarty-pants in me plans everything and the goober does all the fun stuff, and neither of them complain about each other. I need a marriage counsellor, or sibling counsellor. I guess siblings because they're conjoined and technically of the same origin. I don't know. Everything is romantic (Charli XCX, 2024 - again).

Reply via email! ✰ First published 01/08/2024 and last modified 10 months, 3 weeks ago.

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