By Maddie Jaffe
to be an overthinker,
you must first understand what it means.
is there such a thing as an underthinker?
whose skull is a dusty, hollow, echoing shell?
or a just-right thinker,
with thoughts piled neatly on cherry wood shelves?
maybe not
or maybe so
but the point is
what makes the overthinker? what encourages one to flirt with insanity?
is it the never-ending nights watching your ceiling as
1…2…3…
hours pass, your beauty sleep a runaway paper on a windy day, always, always
blown just out of reach
or is it the fact that decisions as simple as what flavor of ice cream you want
are traumatic
painful
and leave you aching, wondering, still, an hour later, if strawberry was the right choice?
maybe it’s the eraser marks
tainting your page with an irreplaceable, indestructible gray from half-finished,
scrapped ideas and answers
that are now long gone.
so what, out of these, truly makes an overthinker?
what does it mean, and how do you become one
or make it go away?
well, friends.
I suppose we’ve overthought it.