Victims and Students

A reflection on inner voices, missed steps, and choosing to learn instead of spiral.

Last week I missed my Wednesday blog post. And the frustrating part is, I already had it written. It was sitting there, basically ready to go. All I had to do was hit publish. But I didn’t. I don’t even have a good excuse for it. I just didn’t. And that small failure kicked off a whole mental spiral.

It’s wild how something that minor, something no one else even noticed, can send me into a tailspin of self-talk that’s anything but helpful. Because when it comes to self-talk, I’ve never been the kindest to myself. I’ve been trying to change that, but when your default setting is to zero in on every shortcoming, it’s hard.

That voice in my head, the inner monologue, has always been loud. I found out recently that not everyone has one, which honestly blew my mind. So for the 50 percent who might not get what I mean, here’s how I see it:

Imagine your brain has a roommate. One who never leaves. Most of the time, they’re just muttering nonsense in the background. Narrating what you're doing. Replaying dumb things you said five years ago. Asking pointless questions (did I leave the stove on?). But sometimes that voice turns into a real asshole, real fast.

“Who the hell wants to see any picture you take”
“Why would anyone care what you have to say”
“You’re not doing enough”

The worst part is, it doesn’t feel like a separate voice. It feels like me. Like my own instincts, my own judgment. And yeah, sometimes it’s right. Sometimes I am slacking. I could be doing more. I could be showing up better. But sometimes it crosses a line.

There was a moment not too long ago when that voice took over completely. I was standing in front of the mirror, and I looked myself dead in the eye and said, “I hate you.” Out loud. Just those three words, but they hit like a freight train. For those five seconds, I wasn’t just hearing the inner critic. I was it. I let fear and shame take the wheel, and even though it was brief, it shook me. That voice didn’t just feel true in that moment. It felt like truth. And that’s terrifying.

So how do you tell the difference
How do you separate truth from noise

Because there are days where the voice says, “You’re not doing enough,” and maybe that’s a call to action. Then there are days where it whispers, “You’re not good enough,” and that’s not helpful. That’s sabotage pretending to be honest feedback.

I don’t think the goal is to shut that voice up entirely. I think the work is learning to listen with curiosity instead of judgment. To ask,
Is this useful?
Is this true?
Or is this just fear wearing a mask?

Missing a blog post shouldn’t be a big deal. But it still made me feel like I had failed. It still triggered that inner storm. And yet, here I am, writing again. Showing up. Processing it. Letting it out instead of bottling it up. And that counts for something, right?

While I was sitting with all this literally writing this very piece, a song came on through my AirPods that stopped me in my tracks. It’s called Hi Ren, a song I had actually just heard for the first time yesterday. The whole track is a dialogue between Ren and the darker version of himself. I know psychosis and inner monologue aren’t the same thing, but there were moments in that song that hit way too close to home. Especially this part, the outro:

When I was seventeen years old, I shouted out into an empty room, into a blank canvas that I would defeat the forces of evil
And for the next ten years of my life I suffered the consequences...
With autoimmunity illness, and psychosis
As I got older, I realized there were no real winners and there were no real losers in psychological warfare
But there were victims and there were students
It wasn’t David versus Goliath, it was a pendulum
Eternally swaying from the dark to the light
And the more intensely that the light shone, the darker the shadow it casts
It was never really a battle for me to win, it was an eternal dance
And like a dance, the more rigid I became, the harder it got
The more I cursed my clumsy footsteps, the more I struggled
So I got older
And I learned to relax, and I learned to soften, and that dance got easier
It is this eternal dance that separates human beings from angels, from demons, from gods
And I must not forget, we must not forget, that we are human beings

That wrecked me in the best way. Even as someone who’s agnostic, I felt that deep in my gut. It reminded me that I can’t fight that voice with more hate. I can’t treat it like an enemy and expect peace. It’s a dance, not a war. And just like Ren said, the more rigid I get, the more I struggle. But when I soften, when I give myself grace, it gets easier.

I keep coming back to that line
“There were no real winners and there were no real losers in psychological warfare, but there were victims, and there were students.”

I’ve been the victim before. That moment in the mirror proved it. But this time, I’m choosing to be a student.

If you’ve never heard the song Hi Ren, go check it out. Seriously. It’s one of the most raw and honest things I’ve heard in a long time.

And as always, if anyone out there is reading this, take a second to check out my print shop. It’s full of photos from across the U.S. that I’ve taken on the road, chasing light and trying to make sense of it all one frame at a time.

Til next Wednesday
(Or you know, close enough)

—Justin