Everyone Hates Me, and what that voice sounds like
There is a thought-pattern I know too well that gets summarised as: everyone hates me. But it is not really a voice. It is not a narrator that speaks in sentences. It is more like a lens that drops over everything I do, and everything I think other people might be thinking about me.
It changes how I read a room. It changes how I interpret a message. It changes what I assume people mean when they say something neutral. It turns a harmless pause into a verdict. It turns kindness into obligation. It turns silence into proof.
It also turns my own efforts into something I can never quite trust.
This demo version of the song does not include lyrics
A lens, not a narrator
If it had a tone, it would not be mocking. It feels persistent and factual. Not dramatic, not shouting. More like an unspoken truth that sits underneath everything else.
Of course I am not good enough. What else could I expect.
That is the feeling. Not a sentence I hear, but a baseline assumption that colours whatever I am doing. Sometimes it is subtle. Sometimes it is heavy. Either way, it is convincing.
I recognise it as part of rejection sensitivity, and I can see how it might behave like a kind of self-defence. If I pre-emptively believe someone does not like me, then maybe their criticism will not cut as deep. Easier in theory than practice though. The same lens that claims to protect me also makes it almost impossible to receive anything good without mistrusting it.
When it got louder
I think there have always been elements of this in me, for as long as I can remember. But it amplified in adulthood, after I left school.
School, for all its problems, has structure. It tells you where to be, what to do, what is expected. When I left that and was released into the wider world, I had to fend for myself and make my own choices. That is where this lens really found space to grow.
It is not that life suddenly became hostile. It is that there were fewer rails, fewer obvious measures, fewer moments where you could say: yes, that was enough. When everything is self-directed, it is much easier for the brain to decide you are failing, even when you are not.
It shows up when I create
The lens shows up most when I make something.
Other people will not like this. It is only my weird mind that thinks this is good enough. Maybe it is not, and I cannot tell.
It also shows up in moments when I do something I should probably feel proud of, or when I go out of my way to help someone. Not because I want praise. I do not. But because it is easy for me to feel my efforts are lacking in some quality, or some intensity, or some invisible standard other people seem to meet naturally.
Sometimes I even hear praise or gratitude as something people feel compelled to give, out of politeness or tradition, rather than something genuine. I do not like admitting that. It makes me sound ungrateful. But it is part of the mechanism. If I cannot trust praise, I do not have to risk believing it and being wrong.
When I am tired, it gets louder. And it is very easy to feel tired with ADHD.
The silence and the spill
One consequence of this lens is that I keep quiet. I do not speak up, because I assume my opinions or ideas will not be welcome or valuable. I objectively know I have strengths on certain topics, and even then I can struggle to say anything.
There is another layer too. Once I do speak, I sometimes find it difficult to filter my thoughts. The fear of that makes me hesitate even more. I worry I will be annoying. I worry I will be too much. And if I have already assumed people dislike me, every word starts to feel like evidence I am right.
How it became a song
This track sits in the mid-point of the Fauhn project. It is early enough that it is largely finished now, but the current demo is instrumental. Even without the final vocal, the track is built around the feeling more than any literal voice.
The delays and echoes are there on purpose. They represent the way these thoughts rattle around in my head. Not one clear statement, but an ongoing return, like the same doubt circling back at slightly different angles.
If there is one line that sums up what I mean, it is this:
I don't care what you see, I see worse, I see me
That is the moment where I am admitting the problem is not other people. It is my internal processing. It is the way I turn my own reflection into the harshest version of the truth.
Explanation, and a kind of apology
Writing this did not quieten the thoughts. But it did give me a way to express them without trying to talk my way through them in real time. A song can hold complexity without demanding a tidy conclusion. It can describe a mechanism without pretending it is solved.
I do not know if I would call it relief. I still wish I did not react this way at all. It still feels real every time it happens. But writing it has helped me recognise the pattern sooner, and sometimes step away from situations earlier to protect myself. It gives me a little more space to process at a pace I can manage.
Mostly, the song is an act of explanation. And to some degree, it is an act of apology to myself for how hard I am on myself.
There is no moral framing here. I am sure I have done things in my life that I am rightly not proud of. But I have also done things I should be proud of, and I do not always recognise them. Sometimes I need to step back and accept that praise or gratitude is not a trap. It is often just what it looks like.
This is not comfortable to write about. It is not comfortable to live with either. But if it lands with someone who recognises the same lens in themselves, I hope it offers at least one simple comfort: you are not alone, and you are not uniquely broken. Sometimes it is just how our brains work.
Previous writing: Notes on Wildflowers.
Next writing: Bathtoast and the line I nearly didn't write.