I have a bully who lives inside my head. He sits in the back of my brain and criticizes me.
He calls me names. Lazy. Fat. Talentless. Has-been. Sponge. Wannabe. Timid. Hack.
The bully comes and goes like most bullies, striking when he sees I’m weak or tired or when I’ve just had a setback.
The bully is incredibly clever. He knows just which words will hurt or scare me and when to use them.
My bully’s name is anxiety, or sometimes dysmorphia, or OCD. My bully lives in my head, but he is not me.
My bully is nothing more than a bit of errant biochemistry that got boosted along the way by various events in my life.
I can’t not hear him, but I don’t have to listen. I don’t have to treat what the bully says as if I were saying it.
My bully is no more me than my tendinitis or my allergies. He is something I have, not something I am.
When I remember that, when I separate the bully in my head from the me in my head it makes him weak and me strong.
I have a bully in my head. I can’t get him out and I can’t punch him in the nose, but I can deny him the power to call himself “me” and every time I do it is a victory.
