I Feel Like Pablo

Forcing sex is rape.

Forcing work is slavery.

Forcing belief is brainwashing.

Forcing others is wrong. But what about forcing yourself?

We call it discipline.


Force yourself to exercise, and you’ll get fit.

Force yourself to practice, and you’ll be competent.

Force yourself to meditate, and you’ll find peace.


But there’s a trap. Did you see it?

Forcing doesn’t make you anything, it’s the doing which does.

Forcing builds discipline, but forcing isn’t discipline.

So, what is discipline? Discipline is choosing to act in line with your values. Not out of fear, but with intention.

It’s action without resistance.

It’s freedom.

But if no one but myself was forcing me to exercise, why wasn’t I free?

There’s a voice in my head.

It doesn’t sound fully like me, but who else could it be?

Let’s call this voice Daniel, like my middle name.

Daniel doesn’t yell. He whispers what we should or shouldn’t do.

• “We should go to the gym.”

• “We shouldn’t eat that.”

• “We should control ourselves.”
  

Quiet enough to feel like my own thoughts, loud enough to pull my strings.

He never uses direct threats because fear is always more effective.

‘If you skip the gym, you’ll get fat. And if you’re fat, no one will love you.’

Last week, my body said: Enough.

Fever. Aches. No energy.

I decided to skip the gym. A break for my body, but never for my mind.

It sparked the same old battle with Daniel.

I always gave him what he wanted. It felt easier than arguing.

Like giving a toy to a tantruming child, I gave Daniel a dumbbell to play with. And he’d shut up, for a while.

But something had shifted. A rebellion had been cooking inside for years.

Enough was enough.

I didn’t get sick. I was sick of Daniel.

Begging for permission to rest, I felt pathetic.

My body, my life, my freedom. They should have been mine but they didn’t feel like that.

Fuck Daniel. Who was he to dictate my life?

Was I angry at Daniel or angry at myself for listening to him?

I started wondering: Who invited this guy?

Daniel’s voice wasn’t just a product of my imagination. He sounded too much like someone I knew.

When I was 13, my mom forced me to exercise because of my cholesterol.

She meant well. What parent doesn’t want a healthy child?

But it wasn’t just about health.

Subtle judgments about food and weight run in my family.

My mom is a victim of those patterns too.

We bond over workouts and recipes, dressing up vanity as health.

But deep down, we know what it’s really about: the pain of never feeling good enough.

Daniel sounded like my mom because he is my mom.

Not the words she said to me, but the ones she whispered to herself.

I was just a kid parroting what I saw. But I’m an adult now too.

Living as Daniel is misery. Pretending he doesn’t exist? Suppression.

Daniel isn’t going away. But he’s not in charge anymore.

My full name is Pablo Daniel. See, Pablo comes first.

Pablo was the voice I ignored. The voice that was always mine.

Now, Pablo’s at the wheel.