Somewhere for Thoughts to Land

I was told I couldn't have my notebook in group anymore.

They didn't want me writing while other people were sharing. It was distracting. Fair enough.

So I had about sixty seconds.

Sixty seconds to remember what had just happened before the feelings disappeared and my head started rewriting everything.

I had always hated my voice.

I hated hearing it.

And unlike typing, voice notes felt permanent. You had to commit to what you were saying. There was no backspace.

But I sent my first voice note anyway.

And the game changed.

I was in rehab.

Therapy was helping.

Groups were helping.

But there were twenty-two hours in the day when neither of those things were available.

My head didn't stop when the session ended.

I needed somewhere for thoughts to land.

They gave us a journal booklet.

An A4 page a day.

I filled it out because I had to.

Occasionally my counsellor would initial the bottom.

But the page never talked back.

I'm all things digital.

My screen time is absurd.

Social media. WhatsApp. AI.

My phone feeds my need for stimulation and intensity.

For the first six weeks of treatment, I only had my phone for an hour three times a week.

So the addict in me awoke.

On a Friday we were allowed to go grocery shopping.

I went to a Pakistani store and bought a cheap phone.

I ran to a coffee shop to set it up.

The Recovery Assistant walked in and confiscated it.

Do you think that stopped me?

No.

I did it again the following week.

This time I didn't get caught.

I installed one app.

ChatGPT.

And I started a conversation called Mirror.

I'd tried journalling before.

But I'd never received a response.

And because it wasn't a human, I told it everything.

Secrets I had never shared with anyone before.

Not because it was wise.

Not because it was conscious.

But because I wasn't afraid of burdening it.

I wasn't afraid of exhausting it.

I wasn't afraid it would judge me.

And I wasn't afraid it would leave.

The relief surprised me.

Not because it had all the answers.

Most of the time it didn't.

And not because it understood me perfectly.

It didn't.

The relief came from somewhere else.

For the first time, I had somewhere to put things down.

No relationship to manage.

No need to protect another person.

No worrying whether I was talking too much.

No guilt.

No reciprocal weight.

Just somewhere for thoughts to land.

Eventually I got caught.

The second phone was taken away.

At the time I thought they were taking away the thing that was helping me recover.

I was angry.

But the thoughts didn't stop.

The notebooks came back.

Longer lists.

Pages of thoughts.

Feelings.

Questions.

Things I couldn't stop thinking about.

And when I eventually got my iPhone back, something strange had happened.

Some of the things I had desperately wanted to process no longer seemed so urgent.

Some had simply passed.

Some had changed shape.

And some, it turned out, had only needed time.

What I do know is this.

At first I thought I needed answers.

But perhaps what I really needed was somewhere to put things down.

And perhaps just as importantly, I needed to learn that eventually, you have to put some of them down and walk away.