Making Deals with the Devil*

*And the Devil Don't Deal.

Once you have waltzed yourself precipitously close to the double-door of death and insanity, and then slammed full tilt into reality, things change.  But they change only after you violently, tearfully, and defeatedly realize that it was you.  It was only you single-handedly dismantling your own life, throwing yourself into a sickness-inducing tailspin that seems to go on and on and on.

But when it stops- now that is something else entirely.

I have been self-indulgent, self-effacing, self-loathing and destructive, and all of the other 'selfs' you can think of, for a long time. Too long actually.  But the 'selfs' have been extraordinarily present in the past couple of months.  And I let them have whatever was left of me after a series of unfortunate events (to borrow a phrase).  I let them become something that passed for a personality- for a person.  A bare minimum of a person in every single definition of minimum.  That's the realization that stopped the spin.

Well, slowed the spin.

Because when you lose your real self to these things that pass as 'self' and then wake up to find your 'self' living a life that is not yours and can, honestly, barely fit the description of life and living, a vivid, surreal blossom of fear spreads through every fiber of the being that is yours.  It stole my breath.  To finally understand what I had done TO MYSELF, it literally stole my breath.  It is a hard thing to describe, the awakening after a long slumber of numbness and disaffection.  It is an exponentially harder thing to describe, the distressing (but somehow refreshing) knowledge that it was only ever me allowing myself to fracture, to shatter, to slide into numbness and disaffection and then not bothering to pick up the pieces.  I left the bits of myself on the floor with whatever desire I had to be a real girl.

Over the past week, however, I have somehow survived a second series of unfortunate events.  They are the Devil of the title.  But they are also the trigger, the gun that finally went off in my painfully dislocated brain and body.  The devil is in the details but right now the details are less important that the overarching view: there is a person here.  She is still (too) small and still a bit disoriented.  But she is finally, finally here.

Cheers Friends.

Oh, and Happy October.