My Demon, My Child

Demons, demons, demons …. oh, how they linger.  The patients of my otherworldly friends has no limits it seems.  They wait quietly until I have a moment of calm and then the dialog begins.  Blah, blah, blah, they say.  Doubt spews from their organs of speech like bile from a malaria stricken man.  Their vomitous disbelief in my hopes and dreams of success spew forth. How does one contend with such thoughts that come from within?

How does one tell one’s self, “You are a liar!” and then ask to be spoken to no more?  I cannot shun myself.  I cannot turn my back to my own fearful soul and walk away.  How do I acknowledge fear and doubt, yet still stand upright in the face of it, and with great consternation trudge forward?

I am lost.

I am at a crossroads I have stood at before.  I have stared down these barren lanes and known that it is but a single step that determines the remainder of my life on this little ball of dirt we spin upon.  All these times before I have shrunk at this challenge.  I have turned my back from it, and with great effort I have strode away.

I am a coward.

I can face the most fierce opposition, fend off the greatest of adversaries, but to face myself, to face and combat my own tortured inner being … I have no will for that.  I wither under the force of that pressure.  How does one beat one’s own child?  Is not my fear of my own conception?  Is it not of my soul, of my blood, my tears?  Then it is of Me.  How do I tell Me that I am not worthy of consequence?  YOU ARE IN THE WAY!  MOVE OR BE DESTROYED!  How do I do that?

I am lost…

There are times in my life, such as now, that define my existence—if such a thing can truly occur—and I know, as I have always known, that I stand alone.  I mean truly alone.  That understanding that there is not a single soul in all the world that could/would/should understand exactly what I am feeling.  I am the only Me after all.  So I drift … I drift in this ethereal mindlessness of imagining, as if it is possible that I might encounter someone along the way who understands.  It never happens.

I am lost…

I am lost and there is no island of refuge.

I am lost, and there is no compass to guide me.

I am lost, and I fear I will always be.

 

~CLS~

 

 

Today is a perfect day to bring this piece from the archives.  I was writing alone then.  No twitter for me.  No blog.  No Facebook.  Only an occasional call to my friends in Cali who, bless their hearts for trying, just couldn’t possibly understand what I faced everyday as an aspiring writer.
Things are very different today.  I have you wonderful authors who do understand.  Yes, we are all “Me’s” and suffer our own unique torments, but we are all familiar with the phenomenon of fear.  That is something quite precious in our human world today.

~Christopher