A Broken Record Tale

Most nights,
The voices inside my head
Are like a
Broken record
On repeat

"Not enough.
Not enough.
Not enough"

It's a song
That keeps playing
Stuck in a loop,
Stuck in my head.
A constant reminder,
An incessant bully,
Making me second guess
My very existence
Every single second of the day
Till these voices
Become background noises
And the background noises
Become louder
"Not Enough"
And louder
"Not ENOUGH"
And louder
"NOT ENOUGH"

And then the noise decays into chaos.
A rock concert playing inside my head, speakers blasting me from within.
Except the verses are all but the same.
Night after night, day after day
Ringing in my head, every breath I take.

I wish I could scream back
And tell them to shut up
That I'm Enough,
More than enough.
But all these years,
they were stuck in my head
playing the same song
A bazillion times
And I
Started drowning in their beats.
My voice lost -
amidst the cacophony.
Maybe,
They were right
Maybe,
I wasn't enough.

So I threw away the fucking record.
And the noises grew softer
And softer
Until they turned into voices
And the voices slowly-
Faded away.
And I looked in the mirror
And sang a new song
'I'm enough'
'I'm enough'
Again and again,
Stuck in a loop,
Stuck in my head.
'I'm ENOUGH'
I AM ENOUGH.'

It's been years since,
And you'd imagine
Now it was just white noise.
For so did I.
But I was wrong.
The voices,
they never left.
They hushed down,
Too quiet, for me to hear
Ticking like a time bomb.
Waiting-
To blast inside my head
All over again.

So,
Today when I woke up
Yesterday's hangover ringing
The soft whispers
Pierce through me -
'Not enough'
'Not enough'
'Not enough'
The chaos hadn't ceased.
And it only grew louder.
Some voices never leave.
And some songs remain-
Stuck in reverse.
Stuck in your head.
Stuck ,
In a never ending loop
Like a broken record
On repeat.