By all external metrics, my life is great. I have an excellent relationship with the one’s closest to me. I have been at the right place at the right time.
I have a tendance to give more than the required back story. I have a lot of tendencies. Some I am proud off, some I am not. Some help me and some don’t. Some make feel like I am at the top of the world and some that make me want to cry myself to sleep. I. Like all of us have developed a set of behavior and traits that are unique to me.
What I want to talk about today with you, the reader, is a part of me I didn’t even know existed. This part of me has been there all along, acting like the puppeteer of my life. Its roots do embedded in my personality that I don’t even think it is possible to get rid off. And maybe. I shouldn’t.
As the fat kid in my class, I was bullied a lot, even the external bullying stopped after 10th grade. My internal bully took over. My internal bully has constantly been pushing me down. Telling me I am not good enough. Telling me that I don’t have what it takes to “make it”. Telling me I don’t deserve to be happy.
We all have our bully, this voice inside our head. Believe it or not, I think the bully is the weak one. My bully is so weak that has build a shell of taunts, thoughts and what not to protect himself. My acknowledging this fact; that my bully is not who I am. I am taking away all of his power.
This realisation that my bully is not me and I am not my bully has come with a lot of pain and reflection. There have been weeks where I have been lost in the depths of my thoughts. Roaming around endlessly. Walking down the same road again and again, hoping to find a different answer.
Whilst this search has led to relations that have helped me, which I will talk about later. They have also led me down a path where there is nothing worth thinking of. Why am I telling you this, cause you are not alone This feeling that you are alone in a sea of people is not unique to me or you Your struggles are my struggles too.
It’s just that we think our life is so messed up that it’s not worth talking about, I sure did. Only when I stepping out and talked to the people close to me did I realize that I am not alone.
While growing up we all developed defense mechanisms around us. They have severed us well. However, we were never trained to live them. They exist to keep us safe of threats that don’t exist anymore. These defense mechanisms along with the bully had take over my brain. My every action and reaction would be based on what these two wanted. Of course, this lead to several situations where I have felt discomfort.
When I had joined my first year of engineering, that this was not the college that I wanted to join and my college’s strict attitude really messed up my system. This pushed me roaming around endlessly in my thoughts, hoping to find a different outcome or at least some way to justify being where I am. Eventually these thoughts became a habit.
It is easy to look back where I have felt overwhelmed with emotion. My ADHD only amplified these thoughts. Imagine a traffic junction. Cars coming from one direction to the other, two-wheeler, pedestrian, honking a total chaos. I felt like a cow in the middle of this intersection being aware that something is off, but I did not know what is off.
By know, you have noticed me rambling for way too long, what did you expect the second paragrams clearly says that I go into the backstory. If you are still around, A, I am surprised, B thanks for staying and C come on we must be vibing, ehh.
I wish I could tell you that everything gets better, but it doesn’t. At least not yet. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Who knows?
What I know is that being aware is the first step, the second is realising and being made painfully aware of how many times you have these thoughts. This is where your bully will fight back, it doesn’t what you to know about its plan. To that bully I say, “Happiness is my choice, I can choose to allow the simplist things in like to make me happy. Hence I feel FREE”.