You Don't Have To Live In The Dark Woods Anymore

I used to live with demons.

My mind was a grey forest filled with succubi and maenads with teeth like petrified wood. At night I imagined a demon with horns like the branches of a tree laying on the ceiling above me, trapping my neck in his gnarled grip, the pointed tips of his new velvet scratching my skin. Another demon compelled me to write - chaining my hands to the keyboard with shadowy palms, his breath binding me to the keyboard, pushing my neck down, giving me lockjaw until I finished my wordcount for the day.

Knowing who I was and how I was, I thought there was no way to achieve happiness, so I built myself a dark and melancholy place full of note-scratched books, and long lonely nights, and a blinking computer screen being the only thing between me and the darkness. A comfortable frozen place, where demons compelled me to continue forward and I was caught in their inexorable grip unable to free myself. I was used to my unhappiness. I thought it was my place in life, to be perpetually denied joy. I’d wake up and reassemble the pieces of me that’d exploded like a bomb in the middle of the night.

I’d take a shower clutching the bloodied wound that used to be my chest, and try to remember who I was.

Since I lived in the dark forest, I could never quite see what was in front of me - real life was a perpetual distortion, a hallway of mirrors subtly bending everything in me. Friends would try to reminisce with me - “Remember that time...” but I could never quite remember. I’d been so buried deeply in myself I rarely peeked out of my own shell. I saw through my eyes and yet didn’t see anything except the dark forest, the foilage burnt and charred as demon fingers dragged grey nails through the dirt.

It was three years ago that I began to realize maybe I didn’t have to live there. When I began experimenting with the variations of self and realize that I could modify pieces of my psyche.

I had a demon attached to my skin that I called NAMELESS. She came out whenever I drank too much whiskey, and wore a fake smile and tight clothes and a suicide grip. It was a persona I’d constructed to try to push my feelings away, to pretend not to care, to sleep with boys and drink on dirty kitchen floors. I thought she was an integral part of me, but when I decided I didn’t like her anymore, I killed her and she did not return. She sunk back down into my subconsciousness

It was a year and a half ago when I caught a glimpse of the world beyond the false one that I’d constructed and saw that the real world was more rich and intricate and demon-free than anything I could construct inside my head.

It was my day off from writing, so I cleaned my house this morning while drinking gold Bali Kratom and wine and thought that three years ago - I wouldn’t have been able to summon the energy to do half of what I did. Something as simple as folding clothes and doing dishes was an insurmountable task.

Maybe, for someone who lives with demons.

But not for me, who wants to live here, in the real world, where if you touch something it can be moved.

I’m drinking a can of Estrella Jalisco and listening to experimental trap and find myself once again excited by the possibilities of life. Because a demon isn’t compelling me to push these keys, forcing me to move through life trapped by circumstance.

This time, the person who writes these words is me.

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