you're not the victim, you're the villain.

“You really are the worst.”

The text on my phone glares back at me. Ouch. I’m the worst? Defensive mode is automatically triggered. How dare someone speak to me that way? How dare someone insult my character? How dare, how dare, how dare..

Those five words play over and over in my head throughout the day. Am I the worst? No, what I did wasn’t even that crazy. There are worse people in the world. It wasn’t completely my fault.

My brain scrolls through its rolodex of excuses, cushioning my ego to protect the stabbing pain that only comes with a truth you don’t want to admit.

But little by little, the self-awareness creeps in like daybreak.

Shit. Maybe I am the villain.

And not in the, “everybody’s a villain in someone else’s story” type of way. In the “that was objectively f*cked up” way.

No one teaches you how to deal with realizing you’re the problem. How to take accountability with no caveats. How to apologize without self-pitying. How to make amends without expecting reciprocation.

It’s easy to be the victim. To shift the blame, or appeal to the self-aggrandizing version of yourself that lives within your mental.

But when you sit with it, really sit with it, sometimes the enemy is closer than you think.

So where do you go from there?

You start over. Being the villain doesn’t have to be the end of your story, but it can be the beginning of your next chapter. Introspection is becoming a lost art, and growth doesn’t happen at the snap of the finger.

Stop being an accessory to your own undoing.

You’re not always a victim, sometimes you’re the villain.