Naming Your Demons

It is vital to name your demons. If you do not, then they are blindly driving you into decisions and patterns that reinforce your unhappiness. You are letting an invasive species, which was planted in your young and defenseless heart, grow out of control - just like a weed, coiling around both your heart and your head.

It is not easy work and it requires time, space, and helping hands to work through it. After about an hour of thinking and writing it through, I can say that my worst demons are:

• learned insecurities which lead to external people-pleasing and internal criticism
• fears of a lack in safety / security
• learned shame which prevents me from connecting to lifestyles and resources which resonate with me and could truly help
• eager self-sacrifice & self-abuse leading to unhealthy relationships in personal & professional life

The interesting thing here is that insecurity is quite literally at the root of ever single one of these nasty little dudes.

Now, this isn't a surprise. I remember quite well being an eleven year old girl, mortified by my need for a training bra, and fully aware that I lacked the self-esteem all my teachers told me I was supposed to have. I knew I hated myself. I hated my weirdness, which kept me alone and uncool. I hated my short stature, which made me the target of male and female bullies. I hated my shyness, which made it hard to share my voice or feel seen. I hated my museum of a house and the emotional frigidity of my entire family - where ridicule was the norm, "I love you" was an embarrassing thing to admit, and being a kid meant you were, by default, an unwanted pain in everyone's ass (I was the 'surprise' child of the family, last in line and reminded semi-annually by my mother that the doctors had recommended an abortion, as she was too old at the age of 35 to birth a healthy child). 

A person saved me from total self-destruction, though. Well, a family, really. I was incredibly fortunate to have a best friend named Aimee, whose mom was a genuine Woodstock hippie.

Aimee's home was the only place I encountered magic in my childhood. We had tea parties, dressed up in costumes, sang songs loudly and proudly - I remember the very first time I ever had the courage to sing by myself in front of anyone was in her living room, and I remember feeling totally stunned to receive a compliment! We drew on the walls. We developed elaborate fantasy worlds and played in abandoned mansions crawling with ivy and dusty book (her grandmother's house). We explored topics that interested us but which were never taught in school, like the aviation history of World War II. Her mom was warm and they were happy people, who didn't shy away from hugs or affirmations that it was cool to be uncool, cool to be weird, cool to daydream. Aimee's mom didn't mow the lawn or shop at the mall. Their home was perpetually freezing but also stocked with secondhand furniture that felt full of personality and happy history.

So, that was the tunnel in my darkness: people existed who embraced the unconventional. That my family's way was not the only way to live.

While there are fears and doubts planted deeply within me, I think it is necessary to shine a bright light on them - as fierce as the sun. You have to remind yourself that they are artificial. They are misunderstandings, mistakes, and projected pain that have been fed for years, but which you don't have to fertilize.

It's easy and chemically seductive to a depression-prone brain like mine to ruminate, to convince myself that my fears are reality. I know this because this is my dad's existence, and has been for nearly twenty years. Unable and unwilling to ask for help, he is trapped in a world of fear, depression, paranoia, and pain. He sees enemies and risks everywhere. He takes very little joy in existence and seems fueled only by anger.

In short, I don't want my brain to devolve into that.

So. Having named my demons, I will turn back towards the sun. I need to remember that there are choices to make. That some people can accept a rigid cage of a life, but this is often rooted in their own fears and traumas - that they, like me, make choices to assure their emotional and physical safety above all, and may not believe that taking any risks could ever be worth the cost. Some people live their whole lives like that, but I don't have to.

Things that made me happy at Aimee's house are still the things which bring me joy, and a sense of support and community. Daydreams, symbolism, storytelling. Making potions in the backyard. Standing in the rain. Chanting, singing, moving, dancing. Giving names to trees and talking to the spirits protecting them.

At the risk of deeply embarrassing all those close to me and much more proper, I dare say I am and have long been a hippie-witch-queen.