I Had To Write It Down

It’s loud in my head. Not all the time. But when it is, it’s constant. There isn’t just one voice. There’s layers. There’s the one that questions everything. “Why did you say that?”  “That sounded stupid.” “They probably think you’re weird.”  “You shouldn’t have said anything.” There’s the one that replays everything. Conversations from hours ago. Things I said wrong. Things I should have said differently. Over and over. Like I can somehow change it if I think about it enough. There’s the one that criticises. The way I look. The way I act. The way I exist. “You’re not enough.” “You’re too much.” “You should be better than this.” And then there’s the quieter one. The one that doesn’t shout. But it’s always there. The one that says, “This is pointless.” “What’s the point in any of this?” “You’re tired. You’ve been tired for a long time.” And then there’s the part of my mind that doesn’t stay in the present. It goes backwards. It gets stuck in things I thought I’d moved past. Mom...

I don’t think I realised how unhealthy my relationship with food was until I got older. Because when you grow up with something, it just feels normal. In my house, food wasn’t really a choice. It was a rule. You finished everything on your plate. It didn’t matter if you were full. It didn’t matter if you didn’t like it. You ate it. And if you didn’t? That was it. No alternatives. No “that’s okay.” No listening to your body. You’d go to bed hungry. So you learned quickly. You learned to eat past fullness. To ignore your body. To override what you felt. Because the consequence of not doing that felt worse. And then there was dessert. You only got it if you finished your main. And if you were the last one still eating? You didn’t get any. You’d sit there, still trying to force food down, while everyone else had theirs. Watching. Waiting. Knowing you’d missed your chance. So food became pressure. A task. Something to get through. Something tied to reward and punishment. But it went beyond...

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my childhood. About things that, at the time, felt normal. Just part of growing up. Just “the way things were.” But looking back now… I see it differently. Discipline, in our house, didn’t look like conversations. Or understanding. Or being guided through things. It looked like smacks. The wooden spoon. It looked like fear. If we were arguing with each other, dad would grab one of us by each ear and knock our heads together to “knock sense into us.” And you didn’t question it. You didn’t cry too loudly. You didn’t push back. Because that would only make it worse. The scariest words you could hear were: “Wait until your dad gets home.” Everything in you would drop. Because you knew what that meant. You knew what was coming. Mum would never do the physical punishing. And in some ways, that made it worse. Because it meant waiting. All day. Sitting with it. Thinking about it. Feeling that slow build of dread that didn’t go away. You couldn’t move on. Y...