Occasionally, when it gets bad, i’ll look back and wonder when it started. Was I born this way or was I made this way? Is there any real way to fix it? Can I live with it? And then I realize how much I treat it like a disease when it’s just a habit. A habit that, like cigarettes, can slowly take your life away.

I doubt myself.

 

 Perhaps it was early on, when I was small. I remember my father always asking what I wanted at the restaurant and then I would whisper it in his ear like a secret so that he could tell the waitress. He let me do that until I was eleven, when I finally had to start ordering on my own. But I still hate subway. I hate telling someone what I want when the truth is, I hardly know it myself.

 

Or maybe it was in elementary school, when every person I trusted turned their back on me and all I was left with was a need for attention. Middle school maybe? When others told me to keep quiet because everything I said seemed wrong. That carried on to high school and I once didn’t speak for a week in fear of reprimand, and now I still doubt what I say even when I shouldn’t. I’ll have the right answer, but all that comes out is a murmur. What happened?

 

But I know the main reason, above it all, is her. She’s the reason for every word of doubt ringing in my head and I know it, but I also believe that those words are truth.

 

Brat. Lazy. You’ll get no where. Who could be friends with you? How could someone love you? Chubby. Plain. Unattractive. Stupid. You’re so cruel to everyone. Ungrateful. You don’t deserve friends. You don’t deserve anyone to love you. 

I think that when somethings are told to you for so long-beaten into you-that eventually you start to see and believe them. I remember a time when I used to tell her that none of those things were true, but after a while, all I could do was insult her in return. It was all I could do. Because every time I looked in the mirror, all I saw-all I see are the imperfections she listed out for me. Even after i’m rid of her, she’s still a little devil on my shoulder, telling me how much i’m bringing everyone else down. How much i’m annoying them. How horrible I look. She’s everywhere. It’s like she planted these seeds of thoughts in my head just for the purpose of knowing that I could never forget about her, as if she knew that I would look at myself and remember every cut and bruise and hateful word pressed on me.
She is the only person in this world that I hate.
So much for always loving your mother.