I promised you I would do the work. I promised you that I would look deep inside the darkest, most depraved parts of my cavernous soul to shine the brightest of lights on how the circumstances of my life have created my black, degenerate shadow self. I promised you that I would do this so that you wouldn’t leave me.
I try to ignore my shadow self. I literally banish my dark side into non-existence so I can pretend that she doesn’t exist. But here she remains…in all her dark glory…I tentatively search for her, walking into a dark cave whose depths are so deep and moist they have never seen the light of day. The lantern I have brought with me is not enough to shed light more than two or three feet in front of me.
I am shaking, terrified, I do not want to look her in the face…to do so gives her power.
She is a ferociously wounded animal who snarls with pincer like teeth that she files into distinctly sharp points in order to inflict maximum damage. She is fucking broken. Black with rotting decayed flesh and bloody matted fur. Her stench burns your nostrils if you get too close to her. Just under the surface of her skin the maggots roll and undulate in her infested wounds. She doesn’t want anyone to see her because she is ashamed of who she has become and whom she represents. But she remains there, lurking below the surface, huddled in the back of her barbed wire cage that she uses to cut her flesh to release the pain.
She lies on her side, legs drawn up to her chest, rocking back and forth torn between wanting absolution and wanting to eat everyone alive.
She is waiting for you to poke her and provoke her, inevitably they always do.
She is depraved. Out of her mind insane. Totally irrational and deeply manipulative. She knows exactly where to stab, which exact pressure point to use to render you completely paranoid and totally useless.
She is half human, half animal, entirely primal.
She is everything she hates about her abusers. She is the abuser. She wants you to be like them so she can say to herself, “I told you so. You are still as useless, unlovable, and pathetic as you always thought you were.” She knows that she is nothing more than a dirty, discarded animal that is meant to be beaten to the point of uselessness and unrecognizable to others. Raped and left destroyed on the bed like a rag doll riddled with bed bugs.
I can always feel her coming.
It feels like a rock smashes into the pit of my stomach, my hands get hot, I feel my face turn to stone.
My eyes become dead, they squint, my lips purse, I look your body up and down to see where the most tender spot lies so that I can cut your heart out with my words. I look into your eyes and I know you know she is there, you can see her, the demon inside of me. For a moment you think to run, but you never do.
I look at you on purpose to see if you will save me from her or if she can make your warrior stand up and attack so she can stand firm in the reality that has always been hers, you think she is shit and you have no problem telling her so. You always respond as expected of course, she knows exactly what to say to make your hackles rise. In her most venomous voice she hisses taunting barbs to make you come towards her. Beating her with your anger.
Recently you have not reacted as she expected so she took it one step further.
One step too far it seems, she crossed your proverbial line.
What is it about you that terrifies her so deeply? Is it that you refuse to beat and rape? Is it that she knows you are the bringer of the light and joy and so she is rendered even more invisible by your presence? She knows she can’t defeat your deep love so why does she try to break through?
What angers me most is that you will not act the way I think you are supposed to, the way they always do. What angers me most is that she is still there, my shadow demon. Lurking just beneath my skin, taunting me with her anger that felt like the sweet, seductive power she had craved for so long.
The anger tastes like succulent absinthe liquor on the tongue. Decadent seduction that makes me want to masturbate in public.
I do not understand why she will not go away and receded permanently into the ether of the past. I am angry that I cannot diminish her stench. I cannot banish her into the nothing. I am angry that she is still my demon to call and I willingly do so even though I know it will decimate my one true love. How humiliating. How embarrassing. How pathetic and destructive. How laughably insane.
She rises up because I feel totally out of control. She rises up because I want to intentionally and deliberately hurt you. She rises because I can’t inflict pain on you when I feel like I am not being heard. She rises because I want to hurt before I get hurt. She rises because deep down, she does not believe she is worthy and she wants to destroy everything before you destroy her. She rises because she is banished, ignored, invisible, unseen and she wants to be loved even in her immense, black, disastrous ugliness.
She is the result of 20 years of abuse and neglect. She is the keeper of the pain and for now, she is quiet in her cage, rocking back and forth in silence.
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