The Voices in My Head

“You’re not normal, and not the good kind.”

“You aren’t beautiful.”

“You can’t.”

Everyday my mind tells me these things. Those little things telling me I’m neither good enough nor capable of anything. They determine every move I make. I have dealt with these voices since I was 6. They persuaded me into thinking that what was said to me was true. They made me hate myself and want to change. I resorted to letting them control my life, my decisions, and me. I was told to be patient, for they would go away; I was called dramatic when I spoke about what was occurring. “Stop crying; you’re fine.” No one listened. So I stopped telling people, but it got worse as years went on. It was only in my power to change what those voices said. “Why are you doing this to me?” I would shout at the top of my lungs, up towards the sky, waiting for a response, waiting for a sign of something to happen. Nothing occurred; they were still there, and I soon realized they weren’t going anywhere.

Everyone has those little voices about themselves, whether negative or positive. I just needed to find what was positive about myself so that I could overpower the voices. So that’s what I did. It wasn’t all that easy. I would sit down at the dinner table and ask my little 10-year-old self, “Well, what’s good about you?” I sat at that table almost every night for two months, trying to find one good thing about myself. Then a thought came to my mind: if I can’t find one, then why don’t I pick one and make it a reality. The voices, however, only seemed to know what I was trying to do, and they spoke louder. They shouted and yelled to the point where I would put in headphones and blast music until I could no longer hear them. They would overwhelm me, and all I could do was let it out, and I was looked at for that. Others would look at me and think, “Jeez, she’s dramatic. What’s wrong with her?” without the smallest clue of what was going on inside my little mind.

I picked being beautiful first, one of the most persisting thoughts in my mind. I didn’t know what being beautiful meant. I believed it meant one was “materialized” and had a perfect body and face. The human race defines beauty as “pleasing the senses or mind aesthetically”, but do you really think that’s what beauty is? Throughout my whole life beauty was depicted as being “materialized” or having the ideal “face” and “body”. But beauty isn’t that at all. Being beautiful is being happy. The vibe and energy given off by someone who is happy is BEAUTIFUL. So instead of walking around with my head down and hair in my face, I began to walk with my head high, hair back, and a wide smile on my face.

Next, I chose my normality. I understood I wasn’t like other kids, and they made me feel horrible for that. I didn’t mind the ADHD pills, the IEP, or the special tests. I knew they were what I needed to be successful, but others did not. I was completely capable of doing everything they could do, but just because I had a few difficulties, they treated me like the bottom of the barrel. I was embarrassed, to the point where I would wake up and not want to go to school. My parents didn’t know what I was dealing with. They had done so much for me to get the help that I needed, and I didn’t want to sound dramatic or selfish. So I kept to myself. Gradually, I started to ask my parents not be taken out of class to complete a test and I would throw my ADHD pills away because they made it worse. After I got rid of all of the things that had supposedly helped me, I realized I was perfectly normal. There wasn’t one thing wrong with me. All my “difficulties” were benefits, and I should use them if they are given to me. So that’s what I began to do. I went back to what I was doing before and seemed to prove to others that I was capable of anything they were.

Then there were the two little words that had so much meaning. You can’t. Teachers, adults, kids, elders all said I couldn’t. Often they made me believe that I wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything, forming stress about school and my life ahead of me. With my difficulties, I had trouble focusing and working on things. I became very overwhelmed and anxious if I didn’t understand something. I would hear “You can’t give up already” on replay, getting louder and louder till the point where I dropped all I was doing and walked away. It frustrated me so much because I did not want to give up—and I did not want to not succeed. So I worked hard by myself. I sat myself down in a chair in front of schoolwork every night. I didn’t care how loud the voices were. I soon got so involved with my work that I realized I couldn’t hear the voices in my head anymore; all I could hear was what I was reading on the paper. I had conquered those two words, they were long gone, and I could finally be successful and do things my way, at my pace.

The insecurities are real. It is not a made up thing for attention. Nobody who suffers the "voices" wants them. These are only three of the many things I heard on a daily basis, and I still do time to time. Though I have learned to conquer them, so can you. You are capable of anything and everything. It is all a state of mind, though you may not feel like it, but you are in power. It is your mind, your body. Spread the word and show those "voices" what you’re made of.