The Voices

07.11.11

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’m bad. Maybe I did make some mistakes. I don’t like admitting that to anyone, mostly to myself. When I make a mistake I tend to beat myself up more than any one person can do.

 

You’re so mean

When you talk

About yourself

You were wrong

Change the voices

In your head

Make them like you instead

 

I don’t have a lot of self esteem. I have none. All I have are those dark voices inside my head that question everything that I do and everything that I say. The voices always pose the questions that cause me to do what I do and say. They are what make me self conscious. They are the deepest, ugliest fears that are buried deep in my heart.

 

You aren’t pretty.

You are self centered and selfish

All you do is talk about yourself and gripe.

Why don’t you just shut up?

Why are you still talking? 

You are such an idiot.

No one cares about you.

Your problems don’t matter to them.

You aren’t good enough to have people care about you.

You haven’t done enough to deserve these people in your life.

You are a horrible friend.

Why would anyone want to hang out with you? Who are you? Who would want you? You are selfish and boring and no one cares what you have to say.

You are really something else, you know that. You think that because you are you that it will matter to someone else what you say. Nobody really cares what you have to say. You aren’t important. You are nothing. You don’t work hard enough. You don’t do your job. Why are you just sitting there? See you aren’t doing a good job. You should probably be fired. You argue too much. You are too defensive. You need to learn to shut up. You are rude. You are mean. You treat people like crap. Don’t you feel stupid now? Look at how stupid you are acting. Look at you…trying to stand up for yourself and defend your choices…don’t you know that you are wrong. Don’t you know that you really are what they are accusing you of? That is what you are really scared of, right? That all the bad things that you think about yourself are really true.

 

Those voices…those are the voices that I try to ignore. I try to occupy my brain so that I  won’t hear them so loudly. They are there though…in everything I do. Those voices keep me going. They are why I work so hard. They are why I allow people to walk all over me. Because I don’t feel like I really deserve to be treated any better.

 

If I can keep those voices at bay, I can live a good life. I just don’t think about them. I ignore them or I try to. But when someone says something that sounds a lot like those darkest fears in my head, it forces me to think about those voices. And not just one voice…they all come up. It wasn’t just the voice that told me I wasn’t friendly enough. It is all the ones that say that I am not a good person, I don’t deserve to have anything…it all comes out and I am a mess.

 

So you see if I admit that I am wrong about something. That maybe I made a mistake, that maybe my personality has some flaw in it…then that is like admitting that all the voices are right. And I might as well die because I am so awful and I treat people so badly that no one will ever want me.

 

It’s Sunday night…the worst night in the whole week. The weekend is over. I have another long week looming ahead of me. I am tense. I am anxious. I am depressed. Some of this is normal. Everyone feels this way, but for me the doom looms even harder.

 

I wonder…what will this week hold. Will it be busy? Will I be able to handle it? Will I fall apart? Will I have a panic attack? A lot can happen in a week.

 

It is like I am standing still…so still that I am afraid to move. I am afraid if something changes or something goes wrong then it will all fall apart. I won’t be able to handle it. So I live my life like this. I am a slave to routine. I am so afraid to do anything that I don’t even want to leave my house. I feel like I have to have this time to myself to be able to handle work. I don’t even enjoy going out and doing things. It stresses me out when I know I have to do something after work. I am in this constant state of worry and anxiety. It is so tense. I am always thinking about work, I am always worrying about it. My life revolves around how I handle work. My self esteem revolves around what happens at work. My happiness revolves around what happens at work.

 

Why is it still so hard? It didn’t used to be this hard. I could live my life and work and still be happy either way. I could do things after work. I could have a life. I didn’t mind going to work as much. I always felt like I could handle it. But now it is hard. Why is it still so hard? I work…I handle things. But I am so afraid of falling apart that I can’t breathe.

 

I need to move forward. I need to take some sort of step. I need to reach out to God. I need to try and get better in therapy. But I don’t trust it. I don’t trust that it won’t all go bad and I will fall apart and not be able to work. That is why I don’t want to get better. That is why I don’t want to change or believe that can change. Change is the unknown. Change is something I can’t see. Change means moving forward, change means letting go of that place where things kind of work. I don’t know what it means to get better. I don’t know what the path leading to that looks like.

 

I want to change, but I just can’t move. I have to stand still. I have to stay here.