Sitting with My Demons

Fear rests right under my rib cage. It pulsates slowly, oozing out insecurities until my bloodstream is filled with nothing but longing for things I don’t fully understand.

My demons come find me every night, uninvited. They force their way onto the dinner table and demand that I look them in the eye. “Look at your mortality, “they sneer, “You thought you could cushion yourself against death. You thought you could protect your loved ones with prayers and hope. But darling, death has no intention of going anywhere. It’s hanging around trickling into your television screen. Are you counting the numbers? Are you? Don’t turn your head away. Don’t you see it coming closer and closer towards you?”

I swallow down the bile that rises in the back of my throat and turn the television off. I flip through the pages of a familiar book, only to find that I cannot concentrate on the words. “Aren’t you lonely?” the demons hiss, “Don’t you miss the distraction of other people? Where did all your so-called friends go? They don’t care. No one cares.”

All I want is to get away from my own mind, but I don’t know how. My thoughts continue to hurtle around my head, “You sit around trying to be good and nice—but be honest with yourself. You aren’t any of those things. You’re jealous…sooooo jealous. This isn’t the life you wanted. Because you didn’t have the guts to go after the life you did want. Stop pretending to be fine.”

Of course, I’m NOT fine! I am trapped in a biological war that no one prepared me for. I can’t even comprehend the level of news being shat on me every day. I don’t know what to believe or who to trust. All I know is that I can’t hug the people I love. I can’t visit the places I want to. I am alone in this house with my thoughts and there is no one that can save me from myself. From my own ugliness. And I am tired of pretending to be okay. I am tired of having the same banal conversations when nothing and no one is the same.

Who am I when all the distractions are stripped away? I don’t know…and what if I don’t like her? What then? What if underneath the civil, neutral façade, there is so much anguish that it takes my breath away? What if I am just a bomb of emotions waiting to explode? And when I do explode, who is going to put me back together again?

So fuck off loneliness, death, and insecurity. I will find another distraction--any distraction! I cannot survive the damage that you would inflict upon me.

Goodnight my Demons. I beg you kindly; to not come visit me again.