I’m the talkative type. I will talk to anyone and anything. I will talk to the kid that happens to sit next to me in class the first day of the semester. I will talk to the guy who stands behind me in the grocery line. I will talk to the little girl who watches me behind the legs of her mother. You get my point. I just like people. The thing is, conversations become permanent for me. Words stick in my head. I borrow them and never give them back.
In the beginning of fall semester, there was a specific voice I was listening to. It was a Thursday. I remember because I wrote it in my journal. The voice was like the lyric that repeats too many times in that overplayed song you hate. It was screaming a little too loud. I can remember the day clearly – it was a morning I hadn’t seen any of my roommates. I had finished my last class of the day and had come home to an empty house. I was sitting alone in the sand of the volleyball court in my apartment complex. The sky was more clouds than it was blue, but the sun still felt warm on my skin.
Despite the calm quiet that was taking place around me, my head felt like it was pounding. The distraction of the sand I was running through my fingertips and the sun falling on my shoulders was not enough to silence the voice I was hearing inside my head.
“You are worthless.” I had heard this voice before.
It had become habitual that in the quiet moments of my day, I would be silently confronting this voice, trying to distinguish who the culprit was. Which voice from my past is staying too long. Whispering in moments of joy, this doesn’t last for long. Sadness is coming within the next breath you inhale. Screaming in moments of loneliness, this is what you deserve. You can’t escape.
Is it the imaginary voice I attached to a man who was supposed to be a father? A voice I created on every Father’s Day thanking me for the card I made, but always threw away. Is it the voice of a first love that told me I’m the reason he wants to die? A voice that plagues me with insecurities and self-doubt. Maybe it’s the voices of the people who poured their sadness and troubles into me. The voices of pain and dependence are deafening.
Courtesy: B-Change
Or maybe, I had forgotten the sound of my own voice. It was really just me in there.
Today, this is me talking back to all the voices in my head. I feel your words and I reject them. My voice will be heard. My thoughts are valid and I mean something. Even if that meaning is only to myself.
I am not worthless.