If Your Own Being Sickens You

Then how do you live with yourself?

The past few weeks have been a flurry of non activity and activity- of working, waiting, wondering, and worrying.  I have been all over this adopted town of mine- to Food Festivals, to new bars, to old haunts.  I have sequestered myself inside in a heap of irrational loneliness.  I've had grand times and growing distress and all of the normal day-to-day nonsense of human life.

Normal.

Day-to-day.

And there's the pinch, the twist, the slash.

In all of this lovely normal there's been a growing darkness, the metaphysical hiccup- the demon that sits on both shoulders and waits. Until you have your guard down; until you feel happy and feel like maybe you can let your guard down; until you have something for it to really play with.  That little thing waits until it can do the maximum amount of harm.

Which is when it strolls up your shoulder and begins to whisper in your ear.

Not good enough. 

Never good enough.  

You should be ashamed of yourself. 

You are worth nothing. 

And the scariest bit of this little demon is how convincing it is, how clear it's voice rings.  The truth he speaks is not his but an echo of your own.  The little demon, the beast, is a part of you whether you want him or not (or her or not).  It is you, the worst of you, the very most fracture of you- but put back together in the very most terrible of ways.

It, he, she, is what makes you you- but what makes you you in the ways that you fight against and struggle against; swear at; damn; curse.

And he's come a-whisperin', Dearhearts. He's come indeed.