A Not-So Balanced Mind

[Damia Owens]

February 7, 2006

4,524.

Damia took a deep breath as she seared the number into her mind. Slowly, she let the air out of her lungs. The second hand of the clock continued to tick as her eyes followed its path around the circle. It had been one hour and forty three minutes. That was 103 minutes… 6,180 seconds. Plus an additional 12 seconds. Damia closed her eyes a moment as she went through the math. That was 43.83721 per minute – a rate of 0.73062.

She opened her eyes and her gaze locked onto the second hand out of habit. 43. 44. 45. She’d lost less than five minutes to the calculation. Not bad.

4,524 in 6,192 put her well below a quarter per second. For anyone else it probably would have been cause for celebration but for Damia it only merited mild contentment. She’d been at this since shortly after sunset, repeating the exercise over and over again. A little bit of improvement couldn’t compensate for the struggle she endured each and every moment. It was hard. It took most of Damia’s focus just to keep her thoughts in order. And, the slower she went, the harder it got. It was often that she would feel her mind get ahead of itself, thinking of what would come next before she got there. Two thoughts at the same time, like a reverse echo. One would be dominant, as though her mind were saying ’THIS is what I’m thinking.’ The other, subdued and ellusive. ’THIS is what I’ll think next.’

That’s where the balance came in. The subdued were a distraction. They snuck in and then Damia would find herself meandering down a third path of thoughts until she pushed them all away. And if she wasn’t careful, the dominant would slip and her thoughts would start to move from step to step on their own.

As she wore into the exercise the struggle remained constant. Every time her mind began to wander she pulled it in tighter, emphasizing each and every individual thought. Damia had to be forceful. She had to control exactly what she thought and when she thought it. If she failed to do that she started over. Damia had started over many times, and not just tonight, many other nights as well.

There was simply no other choice. Damia had to be in control. She didn’t dare let her thoughts think themselves.

Damia stretched. She flexed her neck, then her shoulders. Followed by her arms, her wrists, and her fingers. She arched her back, then moved to her hips and legs, and finally her feet. When she was done, Damia systematically tensed and released each group of muscles one by one in the same fashion. Reaching an arm over to the nightstand, Damia flicked the switch off and on, off and on. At last she settled back into position on her bed and locked eyes with the clock. 4:57 AM. The second hand ticked from 21 to 22 to 23. Damia took a deep breath and let it out slowly as she watched it tick seven more times. Her hazel eyes blinked and she began.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Too fast already. Start again.

1 – 2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 – 7……

[Damia Owens]

((Because I have been playing WAY too much Dark Souls myself...))

The thing about an obsessive mindset is that once the mind gets stuck on something it remains fixated. No matter what you do to occupy yourself, no matter where you go… or what else you start to think about the brain constantly returns to that one thing. Damia had long ago realized that it could be anything - the subject of an article she’d read, something a person had said to her… even the simplest of concepts. Those were the worst. A single thought, a word or idea, stuck in her mind like a glitch in a video game. Never getting anywhere, never stopping. Repeating over and over and over and over and over and over….

There were nights it nearly drove her mad. Nights where it had. Damia had learned that there were ways to cope. Mental games she could play to refocus her thoughts, actions she could take to sidetrack herself from more obsessive behaviors.

None of them were working.

But tonight Damia was lucky. Of all the things for her mind to fixate on it chose Dark Souls… or, more specifically, collecting souls. It was the perfect game for someone like her. It was difficult. When she’d first started she had died a lot. A LOT. And every time she’d died she had to fight her way back through the enemies just to collect the souls(currency) and humanity (secondary currency) she had lost by dying. If she died before she recollected it she had to start from 0. Better yet, the game required lots of grinding in order to buy things to improve armor and weapons. And Damia wanted, no, needed to improve EVERYTHING so that she could cross compare it and decide which was the best option. Then she could start all over again and level up a character to have the exact correct stats.

By now Damia had lost track of how long she’d played the game or how many different characters she’d gone through. Damia never lost track. But over countless hundreds of hours of playing she’d gotten good. Now she’d beaten most of the game and was just shy of being skilled enough able to kill the last couple of bosses and roll over to a New Game +. And that left her with nothing to do. No bosses to kill and no enemies that dropped more than 3,000 souls. She was too high of a level to be summoned by other players and could never find other players to summon herself.

So what did she do? She hung out in the forest to be invaded. Oh invasions… once she had been scared of fighting off another player but now she craved them. It wasn’t the challenge. It was the souls. Kill an invader – get 9,000 souls. Kill an invader – get 11,000 souls. Kill an invader – get 17,000 souls. Damia sat down at 7:00 and by 9:00 she had over 400,000 souls. 10 minutes later she had spent them all…. and still had weapons and armor that needed improvement.

It took so long to get the number so high. Then it vanished so quickly. More! Her mind cried, and more she collected.

By midnight Damia was sick of fighting in the forest. She was sick of getting mutilated by bosses. She was sick of never getting summoned. Worse yet, she was sick of never having enough souls. It didn’t even matter what she spent them on. She just needed them as fast as possible. Damia turned off the xbox and put aside the controller. She tried to move on.

She couldn’t. Her mind was stuck. Fixated.

She needed more souls.

Damia tried everything to occupy her mind. She counted to herself, she played math games, watched TV, went through her mental exercises. But no matter what she did she couldn’t get her mind off of the game.

2:07am, Damia turned on the xbox and sat down to create a new character. She played until long after the sun rose and the day started. Yet she still didn't have enough.