I was cleaning out my work desk today and trying to get rid of things that I didn’t need. It took me two hours of purging old receipts, manuals for electronics, and things that I kept that I thought one day I would need, but never did. In the middle of cleaning I ran across a notebook that was filled with pages and pages of hateful and mean things written about me.

And I quote:

“You are fat and your stomach has cellulite on it”

“You will never be as great as you were at 19.”

“You are going to fail your next exam (at school), you didn’t study enough and you are going to forget everything you learned”

“No one wants to be around you”

“You will never finish school”

There were more but these were the most hurtful. I was filled with rage and anger. I was devastated. I wanted to find whoever wrote this stuff about me and I wanted to tear them apart. I wanted to smack that person in the face and tell them that they were mean and those comments were meant only to cause me pain. I wanted to show them that all of these comments were wrong about me. None of those things were true. Why would someone write such hateful things about me? Who wrote these things? Was this a friend of mine, a family member, or a co-worker? Why did I have this book? Why would someone who clearly hated me so much be a part of my life? Did I know who was in my life that hated me so much? Who was this enemy? Why did they feel the need to tell me how terrible I was? Why did they feel the need to write it down and hand it to me? And why did I have it in my desk?

Then I remembered…it was me. I had written such hateful and mean things about myself. I was taking a behavioral modification class and we were learning about our self-talk. One of our assignments was to write a journal of the things I said to myself during for a week. I remembered writing the comments and at the time thinking they were all true. I wasn’t embarrassed or mad at myself for writing such mean stuff. At the time I believed them. I believed I was fat, stupid, worthless, and ugly. I had no problem writing such hateful things to myself because at the time they weren’t hateful, they were my truth. I truly thought that these comments were OK to say to myself. I thought that I didn’t deserve to say nice things to myself. I was my worst enemy.

No wonder I was depressed, confused, and so unhappy back then. I didn’t even like myself. I was so mean to myself. I constantly put myself down and I was fine with the fact that I thought I was worthless. At first I thought that these comments were written by a mean and malicious person; someone who didn’t believe in me, thought I was no good, and was not my friend. And it was true. I wasn’t even my own friend. How could I have talked to myself like that?

In a very poetic way I crumbled up the papers and threw them away and vowed to never let anyone talk to me like that ever again.