Things we say to ourselves—over and over and over and over and over again—that hold us back
Cami Davila (she/her) // Crew Writer
Leonardo Velazquez (he/him) // Illustrator
The little guys in my ear are fed up with me. I eat a bowl of chow mein with beef and hear, “There were probably much better and healthier options on the menu.” Their little voices drive me crazy. The tone is high-pitched, almost unintelligible for a human, and they talk very fast, all at the same time, all the time.
“Did you see yourself in the mirror today?” One little guy, out of the hundreds of little voices, asked. I felt so ashamed of myself because I did spend more than 20 minutes in front of the mirror, looking down on everything; my round face, yellow teeth, arms with extra fat, a huge belly and two thick legs. “Every day, we have exactly the same conversation. You need to eat better. However, it’s like you forget about it and end up eating the greasiest things in the cafeteria. You’re a lost cause.”
Everything started when I was eight. We were at dinner with my dad’s family. The food was pasta, and the dessert was ice cream. That was the definition of paradise for me at that age. While eating my second bowl of strawberry ice cream, my aunt came up to me and whispered in my ear, “Honey, it’s time for you to start paying attention to the way you eat. Don’t you think that’s why you don’t fit into any of your clothes anymore?” Now, every time I want to eat something that isn’t ‘allowed,’ all I see is the look of pity on her face.
The little guys in my ear call me fat, ugly, big, uneven and anything opposite of attractive. I don’t do anything to fix it.
Every time someone said something about my weight or the way I looked, the voices grew louder. And, this happened with every other insecurity I had.
Have you ever seen a movie where the main character isn’t necessarily conventionally pretty, but it’s her intelligence that makes her stand out? Well, the voices say I’m neither, and I believe them. I’ve seen intelligence, and it doesn’t look like me. It looks like my sister, who has always been a top student in class, my cousin, who won a scholarship to pursue her medical specialization, my grandma, who found a job even without having completed her studies, just to support her children or the girl in my class who sits two rows in front of me and doesn’t even glance at her phone for the entire class.
I noticed this feeling the day I was learning multiplication with my mom. After a while, I gave up on being able to recite the entire table of eight from memory. “Do you know how long I spent with your sister when she was learning these? Less than three days. The fact that we’ve been going over this for more than a week and you still can’t learn it shows that you don’t care at all about your education.” That night, I fell asleep crying and begging God to be good enough the next day. Spoiler alert: I still haven’t been able to achieve it.
The little guys in my ear call me stupid, mediocre, distracted, uninterested. I don’t do anything to fix it.
There is a pile of papers on my desk. Some are mail I haven’t replied to—something I’ll regret when the bank can’t verify my income and freezes my accounts, or the electric company decides to shut off the power—but most are papers for projects I started and never finished. All the things that I said I would do, but didn’t. All the assignments that I completed with the bare minimum effort. All the favors that I promised, but never delivered. Every time that I had the chance to excel and succeed.
The little guys in my ear call me a failure, a disappointment, a procrastinator, unreliable, someone who wastes their talent, a disorganized person. I don’t do anything to fix it.
But, there are days when my mom calls me and I make her laugh. There are nights with my sister when we attach our bodies to the sofa and binge reality TV shows, laughing at our inside jokes. There’s a video of my one-month-old niece moving her little hands as if recognizing her body. There’s my girlfriend, who always finds a way to hold my hand when we’re close. I live a day with lots of sun but not particularly hot. There’s perfectly steamed milk for preparing a café latte.
In those moments, my body feels pure love and gratitude that I cannot hear even one little guy in my ear.