Uncommon Curiosity

I love Autumn.  I love the cool weather and the cold, musky rains that pull the dead leaves down out of the trees.  I love Halloween and back-to-school and the way finally being comfortable and not too hot makes me feel strong and fierce again.

But this darkness defeats me.  I don’t miss the weather, but I do miss the light.

It’s always been that my demons stalk me in the darkness.  By the light of day they seem small and easily defeated, but at night…they grow and growl and snap at my toes.  Right now, at nearly 7 am, they are still raging around me, unabated.

There are the little ones, hardly demons at all – just imps that poke at me with sharp little sticks.  My son’s skin condition.  The photo albums that I haven’t finished.  The ten pounds I know I’d be happier to leave in the past.  A thousand things I could have done to help someone, but I didn’t.

Then there are the true demons, the universal fears I’ve inherited through genes and circumstance.  The future of the planet.  Trying to reach my students, the ones who fight me hard.  Money – oh, money’s a big one.  Circumstances have left us in a place where we are forced to pay someone to help us, and that help isn’t coming cheap.  My sweet daughter’s mental health and social happiness.  Time passing as I watch my son grow into a boy and out of my precious little one.  These poltergeists shake me at night, throwing me against myself until I wake with a start and turn on the television for a little company and distraction from my carnivorous thoughts.

But none of these are so fearsome as the Big Bad.  The Beelzebub of my psyche does not shy from the light of old Twilight Zone reruns.  He holds me tight as I surf porn and poetry alike.  He is not just a worry, but a reality, a truth in the here and now that I have been fighting for months now.  The Big Bad is with me all the time, and because of him I cry in the early mornings and lie awake, burning with sexual need that I cannot bring myself to sate, every night.  He has forced me to turn my view of myself, and my family, on its head.  The daytime distractions of work and school, soccer practice and swimming, PTA and girl scouts and carnivals and potlucks all help to cut the edge, but he remains, under my skin, throbbing with rage.

I cannot free myself from him, because the Big Bad is a part of me.  He is that growing awareness that I am not expendable, that I have a breaking point, and that maybe not everything can be forgiven.  He is my reluctant understanding that sometimes everything in the world won’t make up for one thing in the past, and that sometimes things can’t just be better.  He is the part of me that is resisting reconciliation, the part of me that believes there’s something more important than making it all whole again.  Because that whole may not be right, and it may be worth breaking everything to keep from putting it back together wrong.

After years of taking it, I think I’m finally standing up for myself, against myself, fighting my need to take the hit to save everyone around me.  A part of me won’t let it all be swept under the rug, let it be sucked up and gotten over.  Dormant drives inside me are struggling against my attempts to stifle my happiness in exchange for the pretty picture I’ve been working towards my whole life.

As the cool blue light of an overcast morning slips into the room, sending the others skittering into the corners of my mind like cockroaches, I am left to face him, the inconvenient one, the terrible one, the one with the ugly truth – me.

And it’s gonna be one hell of a fight.