That Miserable Little Voice

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This is not the post I was going to write. I had made the decision a week or so ago that I was going to write a completely different kind of post after reading Faye's brilliant post, there were several things that I wanted to reflect on and talk about.

But I'm not doing that today. Not because I no longer have anything to say in relation to that post but because since deciding to write that post this nagging little voice in the dark corner of my brain has piped up questioning "Why? What have you to say that anyone cares to read? What can you possibly contribute to the discussion after Faye wrote such a fantastic post? The only people who would care what you have to say already know so why bother?"

I'm sure I'm not the only person who has those kinds of thoughts but I've noticed more and more how often I have them. How frequently that voice talks me out of an idea, a tweet, a post, expressing a thought. Talks me out of it by snidely whispering things like; "No one gives a shit what you think", "They'll just think you're weird", "Why does your opinion need to be shared? "You have no valuable experience to impart", "You're such an attention seeker". And on and on ad. nauseum.

So many fucking times that voice silences me.

But I can't stop listening to it and obeying.

I now don't feel confident in sharing that other post even though I could probably write 1000+ words on the topic, that voice has convinced me that no one wants to read them, no one outside my close friends even cares so why bother sharing my thoughts with the internet? Just keep it to yourself.

Even writing *this* the voice is telling me that I'm crying out for attention and that my problems are so minor that they verge on whiny so shut the fuck up already. But someone needs to know because I'm not telling anyone that I'm feeling like this and that isn't good.

I don't know if that voice is depression or anxiety or some awful conglomeration of both. But it's shouting pretty loud these days and holding me back from doing a lot of things.

Most recently being saying hello to two writerly people I know from Twitter when I saw them in a bookshop because that voice told me not to bother them, they don't need you & your awkward lemon self mucking up their day. So I kept my mouth shut. (That is a thing that I have mentioned to no one since it happened on Saturday and I'm inwardly cringing even typing it).

I should probably say that this post is likely to be surprising to more than just strangers who don't really know me, because there are at least three very important ladies who will be wondering why I haven't mentioned any of this to them. And that's because I didn't want to burden you with my silly little problems when you all have far more serious worries of your own to deal with. And I'm sorry.

That miserable little voice is making a lot of things suck right now and I don't know how to shut it up. So this is me calling it out. For all the good it might do. I don't even know.