Rebirth

5:41 in the morning, the watch reads as I write this. My mum would be proud of me for waking up at this time. The only problem, I didn't sleep at all. I spent the night doing things, nothing productive, obviously. Just scrolling reels, ordering junk and being crushed by feelings of failure. At least it got me to write something, hopefully, y'all like it and it's not shit. 

An Arch-nemesis is a hero's biggest ally. The most evil and wicked opponent that they defeat to become a SUPERHERO! A good villain is necessary to make the hero legendary, the Avengers are glorified cops without Thanos. Batman is just a rich dude with anger issues without the Joker's shenanigans. For the average human being, more often than not, their greatest villain is their own brain. I'm not kidding when I say this, my thoughts are my biggest haters. They know everything about every fibre of existence and I'm not kidding when I say this, they use the knowledge brilliantly. A gentle reminder about a small mistake that I had made 5 years ago and *boom* there goes my sleep. The constant reminder that I'm not good enough. A neverending whisper that I am floating without purpose. During my 12th-grade graduation party/farewell, one of my favourite teachers told me that I would be the most successful person graduating from my school. Yet, my brain never fails to remind me that she wouldn't say that now, even if she were held at gunpoint. It tells me that what she saw in me died a long time ago. My brain is the supervillain of my existence and slaying this beast might be harder than making the Joker sane. 

How do I defeat him? He's basically me. Won't defeating him defeat me?  

I do know one thing: defeating him will make me a superhero.

I'm going to write myself a guide for this. 

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ACT 1 - The Crime

Before he became my biggest curse, he was my biggest boon. As a child, it didn't matter how many times I screwed up. Even if my mum scolded me or my dad gave me the death stare, my brain was always on my side. He believed in me. He was my partner in crime. He made me feel like even though I had just broken my mom's favourite cup, I was still worthy of redemption. It didn't matter if people hated me, he was always on my side. 

He turned on me somewhere around late 2020, the peak of the lockdown. I was no longer playing football every day with my friends or attending classes. All I did was rot in my room with a screen time of upwards of 13 hours. I think he grew tired of my shit. He tried pulling me out of the rot, but I refused to listen. I believe that it's my fault that he's become the monster he is today. Pretty soon, he'd remind me of the failure I was on a nightly basis. Suddenly, it didn't matter how many people loved me, because he hated me. 

After offline college restarted and life was back to some degree of normality, he became kinda quiet. He was no longer a hater but there wasn't much support either. A win is a win, right?  Life was going fine for a while, I went on trips. I was happy. The rotting had stopped to a degree. 

I have a tendency to get addicted to things. Somewhere along the way, I think I got addicted to hating myself.

Therefore, the bare minimum no longer satisfied him. He wanted more. Calling me a failure became an overused tactic, it lost its effectiveness. Now, he started calling me a horrible human being. He kept replaying my mistakes and my sins over and over again. I couldn't talk about it to anyone either, I started feeling like a blotch on humanity, not for the things I did but for the kind of thoughts I had. And when I finally gained the courage to talk about it to someone I really trusted and loved, it didn't go well. They had a negative reaction to it and my beliefs were reinforced. After that, I shut myself off, I always put on a happy face, I didn't want my biggest fear to come true, and I couldn't let the people I loved have the same opinions of me that I did. I had to figure this one out myself. 

I couldn't escape his clutches, he had me by the throat.

I didn't give up though. I tried. I was making progress. I almost had him. 

Then I fucked up. I committed a grave sin. Broke the heart of the person I loved. 

ACT 2 - The Punishment

Till now, his weapons were hypothetical. They weren't real. However, now his weapon was solid.

His venom was now so potent that he could attack me during the day, too. He had unlocked the special ability of inducing panic attacks out of nowhere. 

Having time alone used to be one of my favourite things. The peace and calmness it brought used to be incredible. Now, it's just being in a constant state of being attacked. His attack potency keeps increasing and my defence keeps crumbling. 

Self-hatred is a slow-acting poison, it eats a small part of you, like 0.5% a day. If you're at 100 today, you'll only be 99.5 tomorrow. You don't really feel the difference. A couple of months down the line, you're at 70 but the day before that you were at 70.5, making it impossible for us to gauge the damage caused by it. We feel sick but never realise why. 

I wasn't gonna let him win. I decided to fight back. It didn't take me long to figure it out, fighting him was like cleaning your room. It looks sparkly clean when you're done and you decide that you'll keep it this way forever. The next day, you have a party and it becomes dirtier than it used to be. At this point, you don't have the energy to clean it anymore, so you just decide to sleep in the filth. 

Is there an escape? I can't seem to kill him, he keeps regenerating. 

There must be a way. 

ACT 3- Acceptance

I realised that trying to kill him wouldn't work, he was me and as long as I lived, he would too.

I realised that by trying to kill these thoughts, I was making a huge error, I was excusing my crimes. 

I was trying to convince myself that I didn't do anything wrong. And that my slate was fully clean. But, that isn't true, my slate is most definitely dirty. I had to accept my dirt. Maybe, I did need to feel all this guilt.

Guilt makes sure we don't lose our way. Being guilty is important. If someone makes mistakes knowingly or unknowingly and isn't guilty about it they might just be a psychopath. However, guilt is also sometimes the reason we are stuck. Guilt is a very personal thing, you don't show it to the world. So, when you punish yourself it's internal, your soul hurts. You punish yourself by staying in bed all day, scrolling through rot every day and listening to your thoughts every single day and that's the problem with guilt, it keeps you where you are. 

I'm certain that staying where I am right now is definitely not the answer. 

After some thinking, I realised that the only way to move forward is to take accountability. Unlike guilt, accountability does not keep you in the same place. When you hold yourself accountable, you realise your mistakes and more importantly, you start thinking, how do I move forward? I fucked up, I agree but that isn't the end of the world. The only way to not repeat my errors is growth. If this needs to stop, I need to change. Be a different person, a better person. 

And that's when I got it, it was never about killing him. It was simply about growing and becoming the version of myself that has moved so forward, that his voice no longer reaches my ears. 

ACT 4- Forgiveness

I soon realised that growth isn't easy. Even if you do take accountability, on most days, you're going to feel like you've taken two steps forward and three steps backwards.

This is where you must use your secret weapon, forgiveness. Despite the guilt, you must learn to forgive yourself. Also, more often than not, most of your self-hatred comes from thoughts and not reality, so you're essentially punishing yourself for nothing, the only growth needed in that situation is forgiveness. 

Only when you forgive yourself are the chains finally broken, that's when guilt can no longer hold you back. Once you forgive yourself, growth becomes more about the journey and not the destination because by forgiving yourself completely you have already broken the shackles that made you a slave to your self-hatred. 

However, forgiving yourself and growth, both must happen in order to completely escape this hellhole. If you grow and don't forgive yourself, you'll feel unworthy even if you manage to achieve every single goal and if you forgive yourself without growing, you'll find yourself back in the darkness in no time.

 

It's not just an S. This is the symbol of hope, and hope might just be the most important thing on this journey. 

Now ACT 5 and the final act of this story is 'Freedom' but I'm not there yet. 

The only thing I want from life is to someday be able to write the final act and more importantly, live the final act. 

That's all from me today folks. Yes, the lack of personal anecdotes in this one is deliberate. 

Love,

Pranav