Rather than hating on my kid, I’m hating on me today. Do you ever have awful, even hateful, thoughts that you wish didn’t creep into your brain, but they manage to do so anyway? I’ve been leading Project Positivity on Facebook throughout the month and have been trying to keep my brain in a positive, kind place. So far, it’s been awesome, and I’ve been feeling more positive and happy that I did last month, for sure. That said, I still get these dark thoughts, often brought on by fear or annoyance, and I just don’t know how to prevent them.

Perhaps prevention isn’t key here; perhaps it’s simply acknowledging the thoughts and letting them go. But these are pretty horrible thoughts that linger! Here are just a few things that I’ve thought recently and am ashamed to admit they were rolling around in my cranium…

1. Stuttering Stallone—My husband and I were looking for the last Rocky movie (we’re both huge fans!) and he remarked something about watching behind the scenes clips of the movie. Absently I asked, “Why, so we can watch Stallone stutter through the outtakes?” What an asshole thing to say! For one, I think he’s much brighter than that—he wrote Rocky in three days, after all—and two, I’m a stutterer myself! Why would I say such a thing? (Honestly, I also have a crush on Rocky—not Stallone, but the character—which I also think I shouldn’t do!)
2. Eat Me—I can’t seem to get images of Armageddon-type stuff out of my head. It’s not the end of the world (or even humans) I fear; it’s surviving and being left with other surviving humans, like in I Am Legend or The Road or 28 Days Later. I’m terrified of my child being left in such a circumstance and it pops into my head very regularly—as such, I refuse to watch and read this kind of media anymore, at least for now. But I told my husband that if it happens they should eat me, since he’s a better survivor with skills and I’ve got more meat. He looked at me, aghast, and I couldn’t believe I said it myself—but I’ve even considered worse things, like if the zombies come what we’ll have to do…
3. Old People and Telephones—Earlier today I had this call—actually, she called a whopping four times, even after I explained the situation, if you could even call it that, to her—from an old woman. My aunt had called her daughter, apparently, and she kept calling back to see who’d called her house. She was so confused and kept saying, “Hello! Hello! Who is this! What? What?” I was SO annoyed after the fourth call—in the middle of making lunch for my daughter, trying to work, and peeing somewhere in the middle—that after I hung up I exclaimed, “Old people shouldn’t have phones!” What the hell! Why would I ever think such a thing? That’s gross ageism, for one, and completely inaccurate—everyone needs a phone, after all. I can’t believe I thought it, let alone said it out loud; good thing my daughter wasn’t in the room, I guess.

Do you ever have such uncharacteristic thoughts that they make you question whether you really know yourself that well or not? Have you ever said, “Well, if that were me, I would…” in a situation (assisted suicide, abortion, trapped miners, whatever), then realized that you actually don’t know what you would do if it happened to you? Share your thoughts below, and let’s pledge to make this a no-judgment thread so people can feel open to share and analyze.