Deal with Demons

This month, writers from all over the world are reflecting on 2013 and thinking ahead to 2014 as part of Reverb 13. This has been an incredibly stressful year for me and I hope to figure it out this month and settle up, so that, come January, I can start a new project, but for this month, you can share in my story, which at times may be hard in the telling.

Day 1: How do you feel, on this first day, in your mind? In your body? In your heart? In your soul?

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The demons of doubt returned last night, pushing me from sleep with their constant whispers of where I have fallen, why I have failed. They find me when I am weak from drink and unable to argue, when logic will not work and darkness will not show their faces. My heart races and no way I turn can silence its pounding; I breathe in, breathe out, and try to wait until morning when I can make my way outside; they cannot follow me there. The clear air confounds them.

Out through the back door and up to the ridge, feeling the frozen air of December, I pause to take a deeper breath to clear the demons for the day, when mockingbird in his plain grey coat flies down onto the bare branch of the silver maple, eye level, just four feet from where I stand. He puffs his feathers against the chill, and then turns to face me. I do not move, he does not move; we stand, just beyond arm’s reach and stare into one another’s soul for a full minute, and I am calm once more.

This is how I feel the world; this how I deal with demons. My falls, my failures, are many, and this modern world confounds me daily, so this month, I will work to write my way toward a world that fits.  That is what mockingbird told me; he knows that I feed the demons and their voices grow stronger. I know, as well, but have not listened to my own voice in a long time.

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