Battling the Creature Inside My Head
I'm a writer, but I don't always have the words to describe what's going on inside my own head. I reach for each one, trying to more perfectly describe it, and each time I find it falls a bit short. It's that invisible creature telling me I can't do it. It's that heavy ocean pinning me down and pressing all the air from my lungs. I break free, run away, live for a little while; but then it pulls me right back in again, tying me up and holding me down.
Medications, I've heard have great success rates, but I'm scared. What if they make me worse? What if I become dependent? What if they make me better, but I can't afford to get more? Hope dashed would be worse than suffering every day with the creature in my head.
The creature speaks with my mother's voice sometimes: you're fat, you're slow, you're lazy, you're ugly, you're a bitch, no one would ever want you. The creature speaks the words of my father: be realistic, stop chasing fantasies, you need to live in the real world. It tells me I can't do this. It tells me that all of my struggles are in vain. "What's the point of even trying," it asks me. "It's a waste of time. None of your efforts will amount to anything."
I want to listen to it, sometimes. Sometimes, I just want to give up. It's so frightening to end a career to chase one's dreams that, at times, I just want to listen to my depression and anxiety - to the monstrous voices in my mind - and give up. At times, it all seems so impossible.
But then, sometimes, I wake up in the morning before the creature in my mind, and I can see all the possibilities available to me. I can see how far I've come and how hard I've worked, and I don't want to put that all to waste. I don't want to fritter away my life sitting at home and telling myself that I never would have been able to do it, anyways. What's the point? The point is to keep struggling forward because you never know just where you might end up if you just keep trying; because it's better to feel alive with all of the anxiety and uncertainty that can bring than to surrender to a living grave.
Medications, I've heard have great success rates, but I'm scared. What if they make me worse? What if I become dependent? What if they make me better, but I can't afford to get more? Hope dashed would be worse than suffering every day with the creature in my head.
The creature speaks with my mother's voice sometimes: you're fat, you're slow, you're lazy, you're ugly, you're a bitch, no one would ever want you. The creature speaks the words of my father: be realistic, stop chasing fantasies, you need to live in the real world. It tells me I can't do this. It tells me that all of my struggles are in vain. "What's the point of even trying," it asks me. "It's a waste of time. None of your efforts will amount to anything."
I want to listen to it, sometimes. Sometimes, I just want to give up. It's so frightening to end a career to chase one's dreams that, at times, I just want to listen to my depression and anxiety - to the monstrous voices in my mind - and give up. At times, it all seems so impossible.
But then, sometimes, I wake up in the morning before the creature in my mind, and I can see all the possibilities available to me. I can see how far I've come and how hard I've worked, and I don't want to put that all to waste. I don't want to fritter away my life sitting at home and telling myself that I never would have been able to do it, anyways. What's the point? The point is to keep struggling forward because you never know just where you might end up if you just keep trying; because it's better to feel alive with all of the anxiety and uncertainty that can bring than to surrender to a living grave.