The other night, I couldn’t sleep.

I woke up around 5:30 a.m. out of nowhere. So, like any teenager, I went through all the steps to try to get some more Z’s. I counted sheep, I listened to lullabies, I drank warm milk and rubbed my tummy.

OK, fine, that’s a total lie. I scrolled through Facebook and Tumblr for like half an hour until my eyes started to hurt. That made me want to close them though so it still counts, right? Ugh, fine mom, you win on this one. No, it doesn’t count, I still couldn’t sleep. Whatever.

I did feel like a teenager (or maybe just a person of any age) in the sense that, for whatever reason, there were these random nagging insecurities in the back of my mind. You know the kind that come up and bite you when you’re sitting in bed alone at night? Yeah, those. And that night, they were sporting a brand new set of chompers.

After tossing and turning for too long, I decided to get the negative thoughts out of my mind and onto paper. I grabbed a notebook, threw on my robe, and sat in the hallway (turning on my light would have woken up my roommate) writing out a list of my less-than-favorite things about myself. In less than 20 minutes, 28 bullet points had materialized on my page. Some pertained to my physical appearance, some to my academic abilities, some to my personality.

Let me go back to those numbers for a second: 28 reasons in 18 minutes (to be exact). Although one of the items had to do with my occasionally subpar math skills, I still have full faith in my iPhone calculator so by my work, that’s 1.6 reasons per minute. That’s a lot of reasons in not a lot of minutes. I’m not really sure what I expected, but I don’t think that was it.

I’m generally a very open person about my past struggles with mental health and self-image. I deeply believe in the necessity of supporting other people fighting similar battles by reminding them that they are not alone.

That being said, I will not share the words that filled line after line of my notebook that morning. I think there’s a reason why I can never quite explain them to someone else: they’re not rational. Most are founded in pretty much nothing. Intellectually, I know that. Emotionally, I could write that 100 times on a chalkboard and it still wouldn’t click. Sensibility is not at the top of the list of things that factor into self-esteem, at least not in my experience.

One thing I will share, however, is something I noticed when I put my pencil down and looked at the page: every single reason began with “my” or “I.”

“My” body part that I don’t like, “I” do this wrong, etc. Never before have I been made so aware of the sheer amount of blame and negativity I place fully on my own shoulders. I’ve had some pretty nasty thoughts about myself before, but I’ve never seen a bunch of them displayed together in front of me. It’s amazing how different that is from just silently rattling them off to myself when those insecurities want to flaunt their fangs.

I’m still not entirely sure why I wanted to do this. Yes, it was partly to stop all of the negativity from smashing around my mind like a bull in a china shop. I think, though, that some part of me was trying to protect myself. I have no illusions about my emotional wellbeing; I know when things are going badly. That being said, I don’t know if I always realize when things are starting to go really badly. To be frank, I don’t have time for things to go really badly right now.

I’m in the middle of rushing a sorority. I have an exam Friday, another one next Wednesday, and a paper due soon. I think. Will definitely check that syllabus ASAP. Even if that’s not a great reason for my mind to start trying to put baby bumpers on sharp corners, it’s a very real one in my life right now, and I’ll take what I can get.

All in all, I don’t know if writing out some of my worst insecurities was a good idea or not. It made me realize how harsh I am on myself, but it also let me sit around and think about them for a while. So, if anyone wants to try, do so at your own risk. I didn’t put down my notebook, feel the self-deprecation flow out of my body, and go on to live happily ever after. Those issues are still there. They’ll still be there tomorrow, and while I hope not, they might still be there in 10 years. For now, all I know is that it turned out to be a slightly more productive way to spend the wee hours of my Monday morning than Facebook stalking people I went to high school with would have been.

Sometimes, you just have to take whatever small win you can.