Let's Talk
This post has been a long time coming. I've written it in my head several times but have never put it on paper. It is a bit of an issue I have really struggled with talking about beyond a few people but today being today it is the day to say it. To put it out there. I'm scared. Of being judged. Of being dismissed. But it's important that others know they aren't alone. And if Clara Hughes can do then so can I.
For the last few years I have been fighting. Fighting to quiet the voices in my head that have told me that everything I do is wrong. That everything I am is less. That everything I think is dumb. And I have let those voices rule.
They say that you can quell these voices. That you can argue back. That you can point to all of the evidence out there that contradicts these messages. But what if the evidence you see only confirms it? What if what people say is the same as what the voices in your head are telling you? It wore me out. Beat me down.
Everything I did felt harder. Hard to get up in the morning. Too much to think about leaving the house. Hard to talk on the phone even with friends and family. It becomes a matter of day to day, sometimes hour to hour, survival to not succumb to the urge to hide from the world.
There were many days I struggled to get out of bed. There were days where the bed won. There were times I would become so overwhelmed by fear of the darkness in my head that I would sit on the floor of the shower unable to leave.
There was guilt. For not calling people. For being a burden.
And there was shame.
It was exhausting to live like this. But there was always something feeding the snake. A comment. A result. A number. The influx of negative things feeding the snake, strengthening its voice. It was hard to reason with the voice when the factors on the outside aligned with it.
I won't go into details as to the major external factor but suffice to say that actions do speak as loud or louder then words and those words were pretty loud and influential at the time.
And then one day a change occurred and suddenly that outside factors was gone. A major source of the snakes fodder was gone. It was replaced by its opposite. For the first time in a long time the positive evidence outweighed the negative and I knew the snake could be fought. A lion was born. A small roar in the darkness. A will to fight came alive. And other outside influences entered. Feeding the lion. Building it. Making her stronger.
A lot has happened in the year of less blogging. There is less evidence for the voices to use these days. The Lion has grown and has plenty of weapons to fight back with. I feel more often that I am winning. It is easier. I notice it in training too. It is so much easier to push through the agony of a hard session when your Lion is roaring and that snake is silenced.
Not that I don't have days where the snake's voices grow loud. But I am learning to listen with a grain of salt, with my lion by my side. I have hope that I will not be in the darkness for all my life.




