The World's Slowest Poison: an after thought of another blog

 Poison. Defined in the Miriam-Webster dictionary as "something destructive or harmful." Typically, we think of poison as a dark liquid that moves swiftly through the body shutting down all vital organs, including the heart. But if poison is defined as something destructive or harmful, we are surrounded by poisons every single day of our lives. If we compiled a list of all the poisons in the world, we would all wrap ourselves in bubbles and never come out again. Everything from the media, to politics, to what we eat can be destructive or harmful. But in my pondering, I have found the one poison that interests me the most because it, by far, has the most victims. Ourselves.
The human mind is, in my opinion, the deadliest and the slowest of poisons. Humankind has an innate knack of getting in it's own way and becoming poisonous to itself. We let our thoughts spin wildly out of control and push us to the brink of disaster. We get ahead of ourselves, or full of ourselves. And as the old adage goes, "Pride doth go before a great fall."We see examples of this within great literary works such as Romeo& Juliet, a tragic story of two "star-crossed lovers" with the unfortunate luck of being born into rivaling families. And there, just in the beginning of the synopsis, we can see that age old poison sinking in. If those parents could have gotten out of their own way, perhaps their children would have lived. Perhaps the feud of their lifetime could have been put to rest. They could have found ultimate healing and peace by setting aside grudges, and embrace the joy of young love. There are endless possibilities as to how the story could have gone. But Shakespeare wrote it out to play to the tune of self destruction. Why? Because self destruction plagues society and always has.
When we get inside our own heads and watch those wheels as they spin, what exactly do we expect to happen? A great epiphany? A sudden and complete understanding of ourselves? As a girl who spent many a night locked in her own head watching the wheels spin, I can assure you it rarely leads to anything other than over-thinking and self-destructive behavior.
 The human heart has an incredible capacity for many things. Healing ,for example. A heart can heal itself from the worst of heart breaks and shape us into stronger, better people. But every coin has a flip side. The human heart also can hold onto things much longer than is healthy for a soul. Past hurts and wrongs against oneself can sit and fester in the heart until soon our whole being revolves around a competition of sorts. Constantly having to prove we're fine. Constantly competing against the festering growth of anger and revenge. Here is my theory.

When you hold onto something that cut you deeply, when you let it stay in the back of your mind, it has a way of finding your heart. When it does, no matter your outward appearances, you begin to poison yourself slowly. Because soon that hurt alters your way of thinking. You may have kept that memory in the back of your head to make you stronger and more aware for the future, so as to prevent it happening ever again. But that robs away the joy and trust from your relationships. Soon everyone you know is silently, secretly on trial for an action not their own; for a cause that they did not create. It slowly builds to a serious self destruction. And the person who is destroying themselves won't even notice it, because it has become such a part of themselves.

So what do you do if you see this happening to someone you care for? well, if I had the answer, I would gladly share it. The sad truth is you can't stop someone from self-destructive tendencies. You can't prevent them from starting the process that leads to it. You can rarely halt it, and even then you're lucky if they let you close enough to do so.
All you can do is try and recognize those behaviors in yourself, and prevent your own self destruction. Your mind is the most dangerous poison. And only you can keep yourself from taking that poison.