When did it start?

Maybe it was the day I was late for school.


I was running all over the house, packing my bag, looking for the keys. All the everyday routines of an unorganized person - all the things I have learned to live with as part of the quirks that define who I am. However, there was an addition that I had not learned to live with. The dog. A lovely dog, that detests being left alone. Suddenly I noticed her standing by the door, tail between her legs and giving me the stare. The stare that only a dog can give you.


Since we got her, I have wondered many a time why the expression "doggy eyes" refers to something charming and sweet. This dog's eyes, at least, are full of resentment and persistence to obtain what she wants. The guilt hit me like a hammer. It wasn't the first time feeling guilt, but this time... the eyes wouldn't leave me alone; the eyes of a creature who's needs I couldn't meet.
I really had to go. I was attending my last history lecture before the exams, and I wanted to go. I never did, however. I sat on the couch crying, which didn't make the dog any happier.
This became the day I called my doctor and asked for a consultation. So maybe this was where it all started?
Maybe it started when my doctor told me after the second consultation, that she meant I had a depression and needed to go into therapy?


I have now started cognitive therapy and I am learning to think about my own thoughts in a more constructive way. I am not an unintelligent person, so I have actually known for years, that I just needed to start interpreting my life and the people in it differently. But I have learned that there is a long way to go from thinking this and knowing this in a rational way, to actually doing this and getting your emotions to collaborate on this project.



A couple of weeks ago I had yet another discussion in my own thoughts. I don't even remember where it started, and it doesn't matter anymore; Wherever these discussions start, they end up in the same thing every time: you are a bad person, no one likes you, and why should they, why should anyone even bother? On this day, however, I managed to separate myself from these thoughts and to some extend know that these thoughts did not necessarily hold the truth and that I didn't have to listen to this inner voice telling me these things.


So I started wondering: when did it actually start, this journey towards becoming my own worst enemy? I instantly remembered my past self, ten years ago, telling my boyfriend back then to start paying a little more attention to himself, sharing my philosophy with him that you had to be your own best friend, because then you would at least have one friend that would never let you down or turn you.
I was pretty young, and probably quite naive in addition. I realize now, that not only have I, some way a long the road through my twenties, forgotten about this philosophy, I could no longer believe it either. My best friend from back then has turned on me, and she's not exactly leaving me alone.



But when did it start? If something happens gradually, you can't really set a day where it started, I guess. Somewhere between then and now I realized, that people considering me anything but flawless were hurtful, and that all I could do to prevent this hurt was to appear flawless. This is not possible, so plan B became the strategy to be aware of my own flaws before anyone else; and in addition make everyone know that I knew I had these flaws. Thus started the never-ending spiral of self-devaluation that now lets my own worst enemy tell me every day that I am a bad person that no one could ever remotely care for.



Maybe this is it? I hoped for the answer to be more romantic than this, but the start was that undefined moment when I decided that nothing below perfection would be agreeable to me. Perhaps will me knowing this be the start of another long journey towards loving my imperfect life for everything it might bring my way and then perhaps one day I will once again find something that gives this value; that gives it meaning.