ALEXIS IS A FUCKING BITCH!!!

I am hearing voices. It’s mostly one. And HOLY CRAPADOOLEY  is she a bitch.

(What is a good bitch-name? Alexis? Yeah! I like “Alexis” for a bitch-name! It has all those prickly, pointy letters you could cut yourself on like ‘A’ and “L” and “I” and ‘X’… Wait – would it be full blown schizophrenic to actually name my inner voice??..

Bah..

I’m doin’ it.)

So…

Alexis is my saboteur. She is the one that leads me into temptation. She tells me to eat that piece of pie or don’t take that hike.  She also tells me I’m stupid, fat, ugly, unworthy, unlovable, not funny and lots, lots more – all bad stuff and all bullshit. When something bad happens to me, she tells me how much I deserve it and how it’s my fault for not being enough of something or too much of something else. She is everything that is not about self-acceptance and self-love. And she yells!  I don’t know what she’s so pissed about, because – sadly – I listen to her ALL THE TIME.

For instance: My back-therapist-guy suggested I try their training programme. I did that yesterday. I almost didn’t go. Because Alexis told me it was raining. And then she suggested I might do it Saturday instead because she knows I have plans for Saturday and wouldn’t be able to make it (BITCH!). And she kindly pointed out that I  didn’t know what to wear and that I don’t own a sports bra. And then she yelled really loudly that I just didn’t want to go.

But I went. And – it was awful. Two hours of meticulously going over every inch of the body.

Oh, Alexis. You bitch!

Every lift, every grunt, every second of every hour was done to the sound of Alexis yelling: “Are we fucking DONE YET? This hurts. I want to go. You look RIDICULOUS! You can’t even do that! Awww – my fucking knee hurts. STOP it! STOOOP IT! Are we done yet? I’m thirsty! It hurts. That can’t be good for your knees! Look at you flab. It’s disgusting. WAIT! FUCK – now your SWEATING?? Ewwwwww. Sweating like a pig! Stop! Can we go now!! If we leave now, I’ll buy you a really good cup of coffee. From that place you like?? Or we could go look at those shoes you like?? Please, let’s just leave, you know you’ll never come back and then this one time will make NO difference anyway. C’moooon. I’ll buy you a cupcake. AW- that hurts!”

On and on she went, my bitch. And I kept ignoring her.

I felt nice and sore this morning and thought: “A swim might just loosen up my sore muscles!” And then I looked up the pool’s opening hours and went. Alexis didn’t even have time to say anything.

Once I hit the water, she woke up though. Swimming didn’t hurt, so now she was really pissed because it was boring. “This sucks! I’m so bored right now. All that effort and you’ve only swum FOUR laps? That’s only 100 meters. Haaaah! You would probably have drowned if you had been on  Utøya and had to swim the one kilometer from the island to the mainland.” ( Yes, she stooped that low. I told you, she is a BITCH!)

On and on she went. Complaining, mocking me, trying to convince me to get out of the water. Sabotaging. When I had swum 10 laps with her as my background noise, I stopped swimming.

In the lane next to me was a woman. She smiled at me and pointed with a look to the other end of the pool.

“Can you believe we have to swim all the way down there?

She laughed and continued: “I just did one and I’m exhausted! Did you just do one too?” 

I said: “No, I just did 10.”

Alexis had won, and I was actually going to get up. Alexis whispered: “10 laps is something, right? It a beginning. It’s not the 20, I originally wanted to do but it’s better than nothing and I really should be careful not to overdo it.”

The woman said: “TEN? Whoa! Well I’m just a beginner, I can’t do ten!”.

I said to her: “Let’s do one more!”

And we swam. Once we were down in the other end, the woman held on to the edge of the pool and said: “Well, I’m just a beginner, I can’t swim very fast or very far.” 

I  could hear she had her own little bitch yelling at her. A bitch of convictions, “truths” about herself  –“I can’t do that”… “In my family we NEVER”… “we ALWAYS”…”I’ll do it when I’m thinner/richer/ have more energy”) [You may insert your own conviction here…]

And then I spent the next 9 laps thinking about self-sabotage and unhealthy convictions and inner voices that we don’t actually have to listen to.

And Alexis was quiet.