"You’re not good at anything" the voice whispered as I sat down to complete my work for school. It was nearing the end of the term and I was so close to getting my degree. I needed to stay concentrated but of course the voices I heard came like a daunting force inside my head. "I’m not good at anything?" I replied as I slowly started to sink into my chair. Not finding the words to write my research paper due that night. "I guess so I mean what I have succeeded in. Nothing. I mean what am I even great at? I’m a failure, if anything." I had let the voices torment me into believing I was worthless for a long time. Years had passed by and I still couldn’t get it out of my head. Memories of me not getting to play long term in basketball a dream of mine came pouring into my head. The jobs I lost, and the times I quit at something just ravaged through my mind. One particular memory of my coach telling me I had heart but couldn’t continue because I didn’t have enough skill. The whole I don’t have enough skill happened to me more than once in my life and this stuck with me.
This time. I had given up. I was truly and ashamedly exhausted from the countless times the voices made me feel small. It’s like they knew what to say to get me to belittle myself and I’d give in every time. I gave in to the voices way too much during this time in my life. They had this dark power over me. Like I believed what they had to say, as if they mattered.
I went to my mom, feeling suicidal, and she took me to the crisis center. After being taken in I was told I had suicidal ideation. This time I voluntarily went into the psych ward.
The first visit was brutal. I’m not entirely sure what set me off. Could it be the job I had, was it my relationship at the time? Was it school? Was it the conspiracy theories I listened to when I was bored at home? Was it stress? Was it all built up from when I was born? I couldn’t figure out what would let me down a path of self-destruction, mania, and later a diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder. Yet, I was determined to figure that out.
When I got out of the psych ward, I decided for myself I didn’t want to live this way anymore and I was going to have to do some self-discovery of my own.
When you look inside yourself, your thoughts, emotions, and soul, and try to understand yourself there you will find who you are. It’s an enlightening feeling and it takes a lot of time and work. I thought if I meditated for an hour, I would get this huge answer from God. But it took many times and you will keep finding yourself every day as long as you focus on it. Since the psych ward, every day I wake up and ask myself who am I? What do I want to achieve today? How can my persona help me achieve it? Every time I get a new answer and it’s this ever-longing answer. I mean it’s an elusive answer that is always questioned. There are days when I don’t want to be that version of myself out of fear. However, it has allowed me to fight back the voices and with that I’m grateful.
About the Creator
Cerina Galvan
I’m an active writer who dreams of writing tales that inspire people.
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The Darkest Parts of Me
When I met her, she gave me a feeling that felt as though my heart was on fire and cold at the same time. She was humorous and outgoing, unlike me. I was funny in the most subtle of ways but her she was funny because of the way she cried while laughing. The way she recognized the most basic things about a person and poked light fun at them. That’s how she was in the beginning, then all at once something in her would change, shift into this person that took the things she made light of and turned them into a nightmare. I’ll never forget the way she laughed it is ingrained into my soul and my infatuation with her was there at every corner. I was fueling the void of loneliness in me and ultimately, she fell victim to in return for her whimsical and deceitful ways. Yet, for me she was the last straw of being happy in the world I didn’t fit into and I became obsessed with being with her. I discovered the darkest parts of me but also found purpose in wanting to live for her, for us. I’m a good soul and with that comes ultimate pain and anguish. She although I wanted her to be was not pure, she was someone who played with your soul. Yet, the first time I took a look at her, I mean really looked I felt an ache in my heart for her complex beauty. She wasn’t ravishing and only looked her best with make up on, but she had a natural brown tone to her chunky cheeks that smiled when our souls touched. She said my name like she knew me, “Sam, move”! She was demanding and I didn’t mind it all. I told her I didn’t mind her pushing me out the way as she apologized, and I felt this fuel of life burst inside of me. She laughed and I laughed, and we couldn’t stop laughing and, in that moment, I made a decision to keep pursuing her. Had I known she would take me down a road of darkness, no, but it just felt right. Not the kind of right you get on a math test but the kind that leads you into a journey of the unknown. I know most people are afraid of the unknown but there are people in this life that when you meet them you have to get to know them to bring yourself out of your comfort zone and cross into a path that leads you somewhere new. I didn’t mind taking chances or going on new experiences, every time someone left, I had to fill the void of despair with someone knew. I couldn’t understand why people left me or didn’t want to associate themselves with me. Was it because I was so different, and people are afraid of that or was it because I was actually a dark person? I didn’t know no one told me how I was, I never got defined by anyone and that was what sent me into a world of obsession because for the first time she defined me. At first, she defined me as someone who was big-hearted and amazing. No one in my life ever told me that and maybe she meant it at the time or maybe it was all a part of this master plan to destroy me. I have no idea her real intentions but what I do know is that I fell for all of the games she played and the momentous times she made me feel worthy of this life. The first time she asked me to spend the night with her I didn’t hesitate, she just was like all over me. Not something I expected from anyone nor I ever thought I was attractive enough for someone that infectious to like me. She jumped on top of me and teased about kissing me, that was when I should have known she liked to play games. I was so in awe of what was happening, and I felt a connection between us, but I didn’t know what type of connection it would be until the voices came. At first, I didn’t recognize them as voices, I thought it was mostly me overthinking everything, like why did she chose me? Am I even worthy of all this affection? I felt there was an ulterior motive to what was happening, but I didn’t want to believe it. Instead I played along, I remember her first game. I was completely honest and transparent about what was going on between me and another girl this was before we were official. The other girl had a lot of baggage to go with her and Jamie didn’t seem to have given me that impression. I told her “So, I have this friend who is a bit into me, nothing like you have shown me”. She immediately flipped a switch and said “So, you have a choice to make, me or her?” She didn’t give me time to sort out my feelings and say, I’ll be here still when you’re ready. It’s like she knew exactly what to say to get me to choose her and that was her way of toying with my feelings. In my head, I was thinking wow here is someone who doesn’t play around, how naïve I was, was something I think she enjoyed because then she could manipulate me quite easily. I gave into her the way you give into something that means so much to you and you don’t care how much you’re going to lose in the process. I’ve never done that before and so then she gave me life a reason to exist, for her. A lot of people believe that a man is supposed to protect the girl and the woman is supposed to be this fragile human being that nurtures everything around her. I wasn’t like that I was different I wanted to protect her, savor her, be with only her and forget the world around me. I would have done anything for her at the point of lingering in her presence and the way she made me feel, like I mattered to the world. She knew what she was doing to me and she didn’t have the slightest concern for me only for herself. I recognized this about a couple weeks into the relationship we were at a party and I swear this is where the games really began, because I would retaliate in such a way that I never thought I would. We had gone to a friend’s Halloween party and there was about 50 people there we brought along my best friend Nathan and he ended up getting really drunk. I couldn’t find him for an hour, and I couldn’t find her either. When I did, I was livid and scared, I didn’t want anything to do with her cause she was drunk and flirting with anyone in sight. So, I threw my drink at her and called her a “whore”. I have never in my life called someone I cared about anything like that and I thought I never would. She had squeezed my feelings out and they turned into anger and bitterness because I wanted her all to myself and anyone who was going to get in the way of that including her, I would destroy. I ended up getting help from some stranger and she said he was passed out behind the pool. She came and found us all drunk, and I was like “get out of here we don’t need you”. She grabbed my hand and told me she loved me and started to cry, and I didn’t believe her because she was drunk. I was cold and mean toward her, but we played the blame game until my friend started throwing up and she left again. I couldn’t bare her leaving me, it was a hurt that stabbed into my soul. Yet, my best friend’s health mattered to me in a way one’s should. I took him to the car and locked him inside as he passed out and I went to find her. I tried to solve the problem in an easy way so, even he was getting in my way. I told her that I was “sorry”, as I started cry but not too much because I still felt a coldness in me that allowed my feelings to stir. She snuck me into a bedroom, and we kissed for hours rolling around on the bed. I was on cloud nine again and everything she did before circled back around in those hours and I fell for it all over again. I couldn’t tell what she was feeling but I didn’t care because all I cared about was how I felt and how I felt was almost like when you go on a plane for the first time it’s like a rush of nerves and then all at once your calm again but still living a certain fear. Uncertain of what could happen but not caring because your excited to get to where you’re going next. Yet, because of the naïve uncertainty you may just drive yourself into a purpose that gives you all kinds of fears to overcome. Let’s be real, I was one of those people who didn’t understand how to love, I was not shown what unconditional love was between two people or I was traumatized by certain experiences in my life. This time, I was discovering some of the darkest parts of myself and It was like discovering yourself for the first time in your life and you don’t know how far you’d go for someone who filled the emptiness inside of you, you resented for so long. As my resentment began to ignite so did my paranoia. I remember feeling like I didn’t deserve her and always thinking she was flirting with or going to end up with someone else. I was willing to do whatever I could to keep her which was not good on my part because she wasn’t willing to do the same. I felt her looking in guys directions and she would tell me I was doing that. She wanted to start a fight about anything and everything. But what really got to me was how her uncle took the whole relationship. He told her I was playing her and that is something I didn’t take lightly. So, I marched up to his bedroom and asked him, “what kind of person did he think I was? He pretty much only spoke Spanish and I didn’t know what he was saying back but he lit a fire in me. I started pointing my fingers in his face and the mother came out of the bedroom. I stopped and looked at them I knew then I was crossing a line, but it was a line I was willing to cross to prove to them how much she meant to me. It wasn’t like she brought out the best in me. Looking back on it felt like she was trying to rip my heart out or steal my soul. I’ve always strived to be good, but somehow my love for her turned me into a monster. I don’t think it was love thinking back on it, I think it was fuel of wanting to be with someone like everyone else gets to. She fueled my fire of anger in myself for being so different for not being able to like men in such ways that fulfills who they are. She got really close to my best friend, the one that got to drunk and I locked him in the car. Sometimes I felt like watching her get close to a man made her happier than I could, and I thought to myself again why is she with me. I couldn’t find myself to come to terms with the fact that it wasn’t love but perhaps she only loved me because it was fun for her to play games. Perhaps, it was that I saw the good in her that radiated everything else that made her cold. The more she possessed me into thinking I was the bad guy the more I became that. I started to get the feeling that she never needed me and that gave me depression. I felt like I needed her and when it’s only a one-sided relationship you can definitely lose yourself in the process over time. Her mom the way she reacted to the whole thing I couldn’t tell if she was upset or happy about it. In the beginning she would try to talk to me, but I couldn’t really speak Spanish as much as I tried. But over time, I don’t know what she really thought they had conversations I wasn’t told about, but she would always hit her not super physically, but it was kind of playful, I don’t know. She was a catholic woman and those type of people are taught this type of relationship is sinful and I became paranoid in thoughts. She went to Mexico one day, she couldn’t handle what was going on in her house, I think from her daughter developing anxiety to another being sinful in her eyes. Her son always having an attitude with her and so on and so forth. My thoughts became bizarre, I felt like she was going to go there to do witchcraft on me to get me away from her daughter. I felt like in a way she blamed me for everything, and I felt like it was all my fault and I should leave. This thought came from a story she told me about her mom doing witchcraft on Jamie saying she was going to get pregnant early, but she never did. The witchcraft friend daughter instead got pregnant early. That kind of story can make you think especially to a thinker like myself. Mostly it got me thinking that she was a witch and that she was trying to condemn me to hell. I can’t really say why my thoughts became so terrible, it was the darkest part of me coming to life and it didn’t start there. Perhaps, it was my fault not loving her the right way, but I just didn’t know how. I felt a need for her that was only ingrained in me to fill a void inside of me and I thought she could save me. I thought that was what love was where you save someone from themselves. I learned that after, actually, in this moment I just learned that. Looking back now, I can think of a moment where I wanted her to save me, but she didn’t. It was after we slept together, I felt like she had this chemistry with my best friend, and I could have sworn I heard her say his name. He came over that same day and we were fighting about it before. I said, “you said Nathan” and she said, “no I didn’t, gross”. She laughed it off and I took it seriously, when I saw them hanging out together, I became instantly jealous and grabbed her arm from him. She was shaking and didn’t budge so I hit the wall and ran out the door. Waiting for her to come to me in the street she didn’t, and I felt broken. I didn’t even feel any shame for what I did, in my head I blamed her. I grew hate in my mind for her, but I can feel a boiling hurt in my heart. I never needed someone to complete me until I met her, it was like I was addicted to the feeling. So, I walked back in and apologized to her and she accepted It. I couldn’t understand why she would, but she did, and my mind ran back to her, my heart felt complete again. I started thinking about how we first met, and I thought to myself that she may just be the love of my life. Yet, that jealousy never went away, her best friend who said she would date her if she was gay came to stay with us. I wanted her to like me but the way they actually completed each other in joyous ways made me feel I couldn’t do that, and, in my mind, I began to hate her friend. I wasn’t the only jealous one in the relationship if I looked in the other direction of a female, she would scold me. Saying I liked her and should be with her. She had no confidence that I loved her in a way. I’ll be honest I loved her for the way she laughed and smiled at me. I loved the feeling and that wasn’t an unconditional love. The feeling of being wanted or being loved. I ended up getting a job for the summer as a caretaker for the disabled up in the mountains and it would be with a bunch of girls. The drama that came with being around a bunch of girls, the anxiety in me lifted into a frenzy that I didn’t understand why I was experiencing such pain. The girls and my boss gained up on me, told me I wasn’t doing the job right. I had experienced this opinion before, and I was afraid I would lose the job. Instead of letting myself learn, I would completely shatter myself in my mind first. Jamie didn’t want me to go because she thought I’d fall for someone or something. But in my mind, she was all I wanted, and I didn’t think anyone would want me that way. Yet, there was one girl that I began to like. I don’t know if she knew it, but I tried to talk to her several times and didn’t know why I did. I wanted to expand the reason further, so I thought I’d be honest with Jamie. I told her that she reminded me of her, a version of her that was what I wanted Jamie to be again. I think that was why I liked her she reminded me of Jamie in the beginning of our relationship, fun and spontaneous. It wasn’t that I didn’t want Jamie, I did, but she took it like I was cheating on her. She began to give me this mean look that broke my heart and I felt like she turned into this unreasonable monster. “You like her don’t you” and I replied “no, I don’t”. I wish my mind wasn’t in a whirlwind at the time, it began to go downhill. It was something I wanted to explain in a way that she understood but she just didn’t want too, and I lost it. I heard a strong voice tell me to go outside, “go to the rock it said”. I looked at her and told her I had to go outside. I marched outside to the middle of the desert that was next to her house, a place I always go to think. This time it was a place I would go to lose my mind. The voices in my head told me that I was the chosen one and I heard my parent’s voices telling me I was. It was time to fight Satan they said. I believed it because it sounded so real and I would cry in the desert hoping for a purpose that was beyond me. I was at a place in my life where I felt completely alone and lost because nothing worked out for me and everyone I ever loved would just walk away. Before this happened, I went back home to get myself together, but I felt more depressed without her then I ever felt. I became addicted to the feeling of being wanted by someone and being free on my own. I was so afraid I had no purpose here on earth, so I believe I created one in my mind. Or perhaps I was given one or maybe I was being punished for the person I was becoming. I don’t really know. But, I marched in the field like I had a purpose, like I was really the Savior of this earth and I was going to do everything I had to do to enlighten that idea. Yet my mind took a turn when I went back inside, it was all good and I waited on “God” to tell me what do. As I waited patiently it became night- time and I could feel the energy in the room me shift. She was upset about a conversation I had with her before I went outside and was given “gods calling”. The voices sounded like my mom and Dad, but I couldn’t make out where it was coming from, either way I thought it was god talking to me because before this I prayed like hell to give me a purpose. I felt that this was it, I think it was the fact that I wanted to be special and I wanted to be great. So, the voices started telling me I was the chosen one and I could hear my parents crying. I screamed at the top of my lungs, “As, I walk through the valley of death I shall fear no evil”. The voices started to explain to me what was evil, from the crows in the sky to my girlfriend being Satan’s daughter. I was terrified, I came up with a plan to leave the house she was in because I could feel this negative energy in the room, and it told me it was her. I went upstairs and knocked on her sister’s door, she opened it and I lied and said her sister was upset because she missed her mom. Her mom went to Mexico. Her sister bought it and went downstairs but she hesitated and asked if I was okay. I said, “I was fine, and that she needed her sister”. Jamie yelled at her and asked her what she wanted. Her sister shut the door and Jamie came out looking for me. I started to get upset because no one was listening to me. I thought to myself, aren’t I the chosen one? What is happening? Jamie got upset because she thought I was acting strange and her instincts were right. I walked up the stairs as she yelled at me what was wrong. I began to cry and said I wanted my family. She began to lose control of me, and I think she felt like she could control me, so she hit the closet door. I got in her face and was trying to show her I was the powerful one. She didn’t back down and her brother got close to the both of us and things settled. I don’t remember what happened after that but from what my sister told me she called her, and Jamie took me home. I don’t really remember going back home. Yet, I can recall waking up in the middle of the night to some noises that left me anxious and frightful. I hallucinated a black demon-like creature telling me it was Satan and he was going to possess my family. I ended up scaring my little sister by telling her Satan was in her and I had to take him out. I didn’t know exactly what I was supposed to do. She thought I was possessed and ran to my parents’ room. I explained I was the chosen one and I heard the creature in another room, so I said I had to go and followed it. This happened all night and my family tried to get me to sleep but I was so scared and anxious I couldn’t. I ended up going to the crisis center and they suggested I’d be admitted into the psych ward by choice. I said I was fine, and everyone believed me, or they just were so clueless with what was happening they just believed me. I went to work with a broken mind and had another episode of telling everyone I was the chosen one and Satan was there. My boss ended up calling an ambulance as was taking away I was told I needed to go back. So, I started banging on the walls to turn back and they admitted me into the psych ward instead. I stayed there for three days and when I got out, I experienced the vilest hallucinations and dreams of a demon trying to possess me. This went on for months until my mom was able to find a doctor that could help me. I can’t even begin to describe the agony that went with the anxiety of it all. It was terrible and my life completely flipped upside down. I lost my job, my car, my girlfriend, and my soul for a while. I was often upset, and my thoughts turned evil because that’s what I was experiencing. I felt like I was being punished or that I had some kind of hex put on me. We finally found medication that brought me back to some sort of reasonable person. Yet, I had to fight my way of feeling ashamed or feeling anxious every time I went to sleep. Hoping I don’t end up hallucinating again, I realized my thoughts needed to change and I needed to be happy on my own. I isolated myself and didn’t speak for a long time. I wanted to die on multiple occasions. Luckily, I convinced myself that living was the best I can do for myself and that trying to change my thoughts was the road I needed to take. I started to study brain experts and therapist who basically helped me realize I am in control of what I think. This turned a table for me, and I began to get myself back little by little. I worked and talked more about what I was going through and the help of my doctor made me realize that I didn’t necessarily cause the chemical imbalance in my brain. Which made me realize I wasn’t being punished it just sort of happened. I have to say that sometime going through dark time makes you realize the amount of love you are lacking in your life because of you. It is your responsibility and choice to deliver love from darkness. I have since then completed a bachelor’s degree in psychology and I'm working on my master’s in creative writing. I’ve realized after writing for my bachelor’s degree, in my journal, and in my free time I enjoy it. I’ve realized that the best way to impact the people is by telling my story or other stories that inspire people to not be afraid of the darkest parts of you but to use it to enlighten your soul.
By Cerina Galvan3 years ago in Confessions
Moving Through Feeling
Dear Vocal, It’s time to part ways. It is neither good nor bad, it just is. The truth is I'm angry. Even as I write these words I find myself dissociating. It has been a journey to find me. I thought it began when my grandmother passed but now I know it has always been me. Steering me towards the truth of me. I am awareness.
By Dee4 days ago in Confessions
Comments (1)
What an amazing piece <3 I totally relate to some of this and I am currently trying to find myself again and get out of this dark depression. Thank you for sharing your story.