Demons

Me and my demons are intimately acquainted. I spent a good long while hunting them all down. Getting to know their ways. Learning their names. Hearing their stories and listening to their whispers. I found the places they dwell, the nooks and crannies where they hide. I’ve discovered their purposes and their preferences. Know the company they keep and have seen what they feed on. Feast on.

I know my insecurity loves the company of rejection and am painfully aware that anger and sadness are often in cahoots. I know the criticisms cast by jealousy find interested ears in loneliness and have no doubt that fear always teams up with anxiety to reach their maximum potential in working towards their goals of destruction of happiness and peace.

Me and my demons are no strangers. We’ve worked together and against each other. We’ve battled and we’ve embraced. We are at constant odds yet undeniably together. In the war against what they represent, I have more than once become exactly what they’ve always told me I was. I’ve been wretched. Fearful. I’ve been ugly, and I’ve behaved it. I’ve felt and acted worthless. I’ve been the puppet they always need me to be.

And most of all, I’ve lowered myself to all their deepest levels in my effort to bring them down. Played at their game, repaid them in kind. I’ve spent my time at rock bottom, in their company alone. But I’ve also fought my way back up, stepping on their claws, and fangs and scales to work myself up to where they cannot follow. I’ve created the armor needed to keep them at bay and spoken the words that will take their power from them. I know their weaknesses and I can fight their advance. Always.

Yet my demons are never bested, only pushed back. For a while. For a moment. For a time. A victory might mean a moment respite, but they’ll always lie in wait. They plot and they scheme, they plan and they conspire. They wait around every corner, lurk at every turn. They find me at every crossroad and attempt to push me towards their side of every fork in the road. They change my course almost as often as their efforts are thwarted. They are at the steering wheel as much as myself, even when I try to be the captain of my own fate.

Me and my demons are one. We are the same though we’re undeniably different. We’re the inseparable parts of a whole that can never incomplete. I am them. They are me. We are me. Me and my demons are the epitome of imperfect perfection. And for that I love them as much as I hate them.