Dark Side

Self-Portrait Flash Fiction

            You hug yourself tighter to try and find the slightest bit of comfort. As the tears roll down your face you can’t help but blame yourself for screwing it all up again. You look in the mirror and no matter how hard you try not to, all you see are the flaws. You curse under your breath as the words come flooding to your mind. You try to shut it out and not take to heart what people say, but you find yourself doing so anyways. You believe that you are annoying, you believe you’re dumb, you believe that you’re a crybaby and are always too emotional. You’ve convinced yourself that you’re not good enough. You’ve convinced yourself that how you feel is not okay and that there is something wrong with you. Even when you know there’s not. You begin to cry harder as you let the overthinking take over. You feel so alone when you know that you have people who care and love you. You find all these things “wrong” with yourself and try to hide who you are, to be perfect. You shouldn’t, and you know that. Even when the world is telling you that you have nothing to be sad about, and that you always seem happy at school or work or at home, no one knows your demons. But as your grip tightens and your tears begin to burn you go over and over, again and again of how you could’ve done better, how you could’ve made them stay. You blame yourself… and you know you shouldn’t.

Artist Statement

            I chose this picture because I thought it would tie my words together. It shows of my vulnerability, as I tell you how I feel about myself or have felt before. I chose to write this like I did, to seem vague but also too make it seem that I gave you a lot of information. There is more to my personality than the darkest parts, but I chose to write about this side of my personality because I believe it shows more into myself than saying I’m “nice”, or “kind”, or “smart”. It tells you that I’m an overthinker, that when things go wrong, I have a habit of convincing myself that it’s always my fault. It also tells you that I take a lot of things too heart, whether that may mean I’m too sensitive or that I have a big heart, is your own opinion. I wrote about my “darkest parts” of my personality because even though not many really know about them, they are still a huge part to who I am and how I am. It’s almost like a bias I have about myself. 

Reflection

            Experts say implicit bias is “an umbrella term for a variety of attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and stereotypes that we all carry to some degree. They tend to be automatically triggered, hard to control, and can often influence what we say and do without awareness.”

            Verna Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She further explains about implicit biases and how we automatically fall back on them and we need to learn to get out of that automatic response. She says that there are three steps to get out of the persistence and denial of implicit biases. Step One: get out of denial, stop trying to be a “good” person and be a real person.  According to Myers, to begin to battle bias we must stop denying that it exists. “We cannot change that which we do not accept”. Step Two: acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from them. Step Three: when we see/hear something that is wrong, we need to have the courage to stand up and say something, even if it’s someone we love and care about.

            Although Myers was mostly talking about biases, we have about other people I think we can have them about ourselves too. I’m connecting this to myself because I always seem to default back to a place where I am blaming myself for things and always overthinking to an extreme. Sometimes I don’t even realize that I’m doing it and sometimes I deny that I do. Because of things that have happened in my life and things people have said to me it has formed a bias I have about myself, that I’m not good enough and that it’s easy for people to leave me. Or that I’m a crybaby and cry too much, or that I’m annoying. I’ve formed these negative biases. Sometimes I do follow the steps Myers tells us to follow but when you’re in a battle against yourself sometimes It can be hard, but I’m doing my best.