Little Voice

Sometimes in life the voices in our head win.  Those horrible voices who tell you you're not good enough or that you're ugly or that you'll never be a success at anything.  I've been able to keep those voices at a whisper for a while but in recent weeks they have found a way to turn up the volume and are currently shouting at me.

They are so loud, it is very hard to ignore them.  The ones who shout the loudest are the ones who get heard and currently the most deafening culprits are "you don't deserve to be happy" and "you're not good enough".

Given I have been suffering with depression and anxiety for a long time, I am more than used to these voices and am getting better at dealing with them.  I think part of the reason they are shouting so loudly at the moment is because I'm not taking good enough care of myself.  When I eat well, sleep well (or as well as one can when one suffers with insomnia), meditate regularly and practice yoga I feel better about myself and those voices tend not to scream so loudly.  Just a small deviation (so I've neglected my yoga practice and have consumed far too much alcohol than is necessary in the last 2 weeks) tends to give my misery a chance to get its claws back in.  The one great thing about having suffered for as long as I have is that I now recognise when I'm walking into blackness and can do my utmost to try to either avoid going there entirely or at least to have some kind of light with me to get me through it without too much injury.

I vow to be a better person not just to shut the voices up, but because I want to be.  As hard as it is, I have to accept who I am right in this moment in order to be able to be better.  I will take better care of myself and in turn take better care of those around me.  I will be stronger and not allow myself to be caught up in what others are doing if it does not serve me or my goals in life.  Learning to say no to others is about learning to say yes to yourself (thank you to the gorgeous Chloe Brotheridge for that gem of a quote) and I definitely need to be saying yes to myself a lot more.

Sometimes in life the voices win, yes, but sometimes if we listen carefully we might just hear that whisper of courage that tells you to keep going and perhaps we will learn something we didn't know before and become all the better for it.