When I saw the first message, I didn't know what to think.
"You're not good enough, are you?" was written on a post-it note stuck to my lamp. The handwriting looked familiar to me, but I couldn't connect a face to it. It was written in black ink from what I assumed to be a Sharpie pen. It felt like a punchline without a joke, or a media reference I didn't get.
I questioned my parents about it over breakfast, but both were just as baffled as me. I decided not to give it too much thought, categorizing it as one of those quirky once-in-a-lifetime incidences that you tell your family over Thanksgiving dinner.
Two weeks had passed when I found the next message. This time, I found it stuck to my window when I lifted my head up from the homework in my lap. "Shouldn't you be better?" this one asked. Again, I showed it to my parents, but at this point, they thought it was all part of an elaborate joke I had made up.
The messages started appearing more frequently over time. Even though they were all over the house, I was always the only one to discover them. In the beginning, I sensed a twinge of condescension in each message, but I figured that maybe that was just me getting annoyed with them. Over time, though, the messages gradually became more malicious. It was now commonplace to see phrases like "You're worthless," and "You're bound to fail," on these little scraps of paper.
As always, I tried to ignore it like I had been for these past few months, but some of them really shook me. The one last night said "You don't deserve all the good things you have," right after I saw a commercial about poverty. This afternoon, after my father scolded me for getting a fender bender on his car, I saw a note stuck to his back that read "You're a huge burden on your parents."
Suddenly, these messages were becoming hard to ignore. They started appearing everywhere: at my school, the store, my job, the park. Even when the winter came, the harsh weather didn't erode the thin scraps of paper. They were always there, fully intact, for me to see, but no one else. My patience was wearing thin by my inability to call attention to this phenomena. I couldn't stand it. Seeing those little cream yellow papers fluttering in the wind felt like I was being mocked, as if they were laughing at me.
I stepped outside one day to shovel the snow, but I couldn't get past my doorway. There were dozens of them all around the neighborhood. They were stuck on the houses, the cars, the trees, and even the mailboxes! They looked like yellow eyes peeking out from the snow-covered neighborhood, judging me.
I stumbled back inside. My breathing was weak and my head spun. I had to hang on to the wall in order to keep walking. I somehow ended up in the washroom and took rest on the rug. I lied there until I had calmed down enough to stand up. In my panic attack, I had worked up a sweat. I decided to put off shoveling the snow and just take a relaxing shower for now. As I removed my winter layers, something fell out of my pocket and hit the floor. I knelt down to pick it up.
It was a pack of post-it notes, and the hands that I held them in were stained with Sharpie ink.
