Have you ever felt so low that you didn't believe there would ever be time you'd have the strength to climb the rings on the ladder and pull yourself out of the darkness? Rock bottom is the worst place to be; it's the loneliest, coldest, most hollow place you can land and there is nothing down there that can cushion your fall or lessen the blow you take.

If you hear you're useless enough times, you start to believe it.

If you hear you're a waste of space enough times, you start to agree with it.

If you hear you're not good enough enough times, you start to see it.

If you hear you're nothing enough times, you start to become it.

I learned from a very young age that words matter. The power they hold over others is so powerful and tremendous, it's more than just slightly frightening. Having negative thoughts forcefed into your brain time and time again only reiterates to you that you are, in fact, whatever it is those negative thoughts imply.

There was a time I was so beat down I believed that the genuine compliments I received from my family, friends, and even strangers were lies handed out to me because they pitied me. I didn't think one good thought about myself. Not ever. Negativity showered my mind, mainly because a sorry excuse for a man with such little self-esteem believed that tearing down a little girl would somehow make him more.

Spoiler alert: he succeeded in making me feel nothing but a hideous carcass of a small, invisible nothing.

Because of this, I tried with such drive to be perfect in everything I did. I failed every test unless I got a 100 percent. I failed every contest unless I came in first place. I failed life unless I lived it perfectly and without flaw.

And down the rabbit hole I went...

I knew enough to know that I was showing him he didn't deserve a place in my life because I had it all without him, but not enough to know that thinking this way turned my already delicate state into an unsound one.

I was so consumed with attempting to execute perfection, I allowed my life to pass me by without notice. I was Alice in Wonderland without even realizing I had fallen.

Nothing is as nothing does. I was going through the motions of a nothing girl because I truly believed that's all I was.

I didn't believe I had one positive thing to offer this world.

It wasn't until much later I realized that my friends, family and even strangers complimented me because they believed the words they spoke.

It wasn't until a long time after that that I started to see my positive attributes — did I realize that even just my smile had the potential to brighten the day of strangers?

I found out that I was funny, joking with everyone I came into contact with.

I found out that I was loved more than I ever could've imagined.

I finally opened my eyes to see myself the way others had been seeing me for years.

It was then I wondered how I let a pathetic excuse for a man ruin so much of who I was.

I now know that people are going to do what they have to do to make themselves feel better.

The good news is, it's up to me whether you let that kind of negativity have any hold on my life.