Negative Self-Talk [or, it's not *always* all bad, is it?]

I want to tell a story that I have never really told before. I've told it to all of three people, and only one sort of remembers it (and they asked about it about two years ago, so who is to say they even still remember?).

It's something I don't share, because it is very private and puts me in a weird light. But it also highlights how some things are for me, and it shows how strange life can be some times.

Also, no need to be alarmed by any of this. There is no doom and gloom, there is no horrible tragicness to it. It's just...really, really weird.

I can't remember exactly when it was, though I feel like I was a senior in high school, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I have no "documentation" to refer to for it, no journals from that time, so all I've got is a best guess. Either way, it was the later high school years.
And I was super good at negative self-talk. If there was an award for it, I could have won, in some fashion or another. Which is not something you want to be winning at, but I mean, I was really good at it.
No matter what the situation, I was somehow able to tell myself that I wasn't good enough, never would be, and there was no sense in trying anything, because it just did not matter. It wasn't impeding my day-to-day life - I still did my classwork and my homework and all that nonsense just fine, but anything beyond that was a chore to even suggest I do.
I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life, the options looked bleak (I graduated high school in 2009, and this was probably 2008 or so, and I was aware very much so of the financial crisis and economy - as much as a kid in high school can be, anyway), and just...what was the point?

This negative self talk in my head was bitter and angry. It sounded like me when I'm bitchy, but even more so. You know, how you sound in your head to yourself, it's your own voice (or how you perceive it), so it wasn't a different voice, but it wasn't my own normal voice. It had it out for me, and it was under the impression the world had it out for me as well, or that I wouldn't fit into the world. Which, being a teenager, made perfect sense, and so this voice just kept going and going and going.
Eventually, it got pretty bad. It was almost constant. It started to overpower my own (normal) voice, which got shyer and shyer about "speaking" as it would just be bitched out for even suggesting something remotely positive.

I named the evil voice "Lucy." Because, what else do you do when you feel like there's something in your head that's not you? You give it a name. Probably not the smartest idea, because that made it more "real" in a way, but it worked out in the end, I assure you.
"Lucy" got louder and louder. Meaner. Nothing was good enough. I wasn't good enough. The world wasn't really worth being a part of, anyway. It all made sense, everything "she" was spewing at me.

Until one weekend, and I finally had enough of it. I decided what better way to deal, than to write it out. Everything. Whatever was coming at me from that mean-spirited voice, on to paper. My hands can't keep up with as fast as my head can move sometimes, so it sort of left places where I could interject, to try and reason with myself. And so I did.
I turned it into a real conversation, so to speak, crazy evil side, versus the part of myself that was trying to defend myself.

Of course, I wasn't doing well at any of it. I've never been terribly good with positive self-talk, and especially not back then. But I tried. I was losing, though. I would get "shouted" down and given harsh rebuttals left and right.

Somewhere through all of that though, a new and entirely different sound came up. A different voice of mine, that I didn't know I had. Something that was more cheerleader and pep-talk like. Something that was on my side, to help bolster, so I wouldn't be so shy in my own damned head. It helped point out everything that was wrong with what the other, mean voice was saying. While all the points made on both sides were valid, some were more realistic than others, and if I remember correctly, the "Lucy" version of things jumped to a lot of conclusions, while the nicer version of things were more of the idea to just take it a step at a time and not just give up, because that would be stupid.

Somehow, the argument ended up changing shape, and I was able to talk down the mean side of things.
The ending was, basically, that things are probably not going to be awesome, but that is no excuse to not try. That's no excuse to just give up or quit or die or not try and figure out what kind of life I wanted to have. The nice side of things suggested that, really, there is a lot I can't do, but that doesn't mean there's nothing that I can do, and that was good enough for me, and good enough to "banish" the evil sounding voice.

And banish really is the right word. It was gone. Well, not 100%. It tried to whisper, and I was able to manage to tell it to shut up and whatnot. But it wasn't loud, or even really at a normal speaking level (so to say) for quite a while.

Though, it never really left. Because it still comes out, even now. Though less mean, and more...scared? It no longer has a name, because that isn't necessary to fight it (though, it may be again someday, who knows). It doesn't know what to think of everything overall - it still has the doom and gloom of before, but with much less certainty about it.
But, again, positive self-talk has helped it go away. I'm still learning how to mentally hug myself and how to tell myself that it's not all horrible, but sometimes it works. Part of life recently has been to be able to forgive myself for screwing up or slacking off or just not doing. And part of things recently has also been to make sure and be happy with all of the things that I am doing or even just trying to do - that's the only way to make progress, is to try, anyway.

But that does not change the idea that I am the queen of negative self-talk. That bitchy-sounding voice is still the loudest of them all. The positive-sounding one can be a bit loud, but as it gets less "screen time," it doesn't really measure up. No matter what, I can still find a way to tell myself that life is shitty. I don't even have to try, it just happens.
But it is helpful to remember that, at one point, I was able to fight it down and lock it away for a bit. And to know that, if necessary, that is possible again. Fool proof? No. Plausible? Of course.

Life is not all doom and gloom. You can let it be so, sure. But, you have the ability to fight that off. You can magically summon a positive spin on things and you can talk your way out of it. Sometimes it doesn't seem like you're letting the gloom in all too much. And then one day nothing is worth getting out of bed for, and everything looks bleak and stupid and what's the point of even getting on any more, there's no looking up.
There may not be any looking up. It may not get any better. But you'll never know if you don't try. And, so far, that's all the reassurance I've needed.

~Havok

P.S. For example, all the while writing this, the idea that it was crazy, that it was stupid, that it wasn't going to make sense, that somehow I'd get labeled as crazy, etc - all that was blowing around my head. Even though I was dead set on telling this story.