Credit: Getty
We can all be our own worst enemy, when really we should be our own biggest fan. Our guest editor pens a letter to her own harshest critic.
Dear inner bully,
I’m writing to you to tell you that it’s over. We are over. The relationship we’ve had has been the longest one of my life, and we’ve been through a lot together. But I can’t do this anymore. It’s too painful, it’s too abusive, it’s making me sick.
I want to be 100% clear, that it is You, and not Me. I am not the problem. The only mistake I made was putting up with you for so long, and hiding you from everyone else. I protected you, and covered up your bullying because I thought you loved me deep down. You told me you knew me best. You told me nobody else would ever love me. I somehow thought you did, and were looking out for me. I became so accustomed to the hum of your negativity that it almost comforted me, I would sometimes actively seek it out. You used that protection and love I gave you to run free with your constant ridicule and hatred.
All you ever did was hold me back from the things that would have made me happier than you ever could. You stopped me from talking to boys I fancied because you told me I was too fat and ugly for anyone to want me. You stopped me from going out because you told me I wasn’t funny enough, or smart enough. You told me I should be afraid of food, and told me it was the thing holding me back in my life, and you didn’t let me go out for meals with my friends and said it was better to stay home and starve. You told me my cellulite was so disgusting that I should never go to the beach and subject anyone else to it, even though EVERYONE I have ever seen at the beach has it.
I want to be 100% clear, that it is You, and not Me. I am not the problem.
Why was I not allowed? You told me I couldn’t leave the house without make up. You told me people would like me less if they thought I wasn’t beautiful. You told me I didn’t deserve anything I had, and that it was luck that nobody had worked out how worthless I was yet, robbing me of the ability to ever feel proud of myself, or to feel I belonged in the rooms I had worked so hard to be in. You told me my anxiety and depression, conditions YOU were heavily contributing to, were my fault, and my burden to bear on my own. You told me I was nothing because I didn’t finish my A levels.
You made me afraid of everything. Even myself. You made me think every mistake I made was the end of the world, and that I would never be forgiven. You told me my growth had no value. You told me I shouldn’t be alive, and that I was just a burden on everyone around me.
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But you were wrong about everything you said. You are nothing. You have achieved nothing. You are the coward who relies on the shadows to prey on a defenceless young woman. You have no purpose. You have no power. You’re just a bitter, jealous, bowl of dicks, and I want nothing further to do with you.
We are done. I’ve told everyone what you did, and you can’t hurt me anymore.
Go on, off you fuck. I don’t need you.
Sincerely yours,
Jameela Jamil
Photography: Getty
Images: Instagram
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