Today is Day One of NaBloPoMo and as promised, I will be sharing tidbits from Transmissions From CrazyTown (a.k.a: letters from you). I received this extra special audio message the other day from my letter-keeper friend, who is apparently in close contact with the one-and-only Bane. For those of you unfamiliar with the Dark Night Rises character, please google and prep yourself for the confusing mixture of terror and sexual attraction.
(It literally took me about two hours to figure out how to embed this file, so your undivided SHOCK AND UTTER AMAZEMENT is absolutely necessary. I even had a back-up plan, which included a series of Bane google-images and accompanying written transcription of the message. Tom Hardy now included as an eye-candy bonus. SUCK IT, TECHNOLOGY.)
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| You know you want to. |
What gets me about this message is how long it took me to figure out if it was actually a joke, or if someone really meant it. Because sometimes that's exactly what I hear in my own head; as if there's a part of my brain that's been pummeled enough to think I deserve nothing more in life than an endless box of cookie recipes and ten kids to coddle until I die alone, covered in half-finished knitting projects. As if there's a piece of me that truly believes that what I do and say has no impact, no place, and no weight in this world. Apparently it also needs a janky face mask with which to rasp sweet nothings of despair in my ear all day long.
That's what they would call a "personal demon," right? Those fickle little thought patterns that don't seem to do much harm until much farther down the road, when they've grown enough to poke a hole in your tires. We all have them. The belief that "I'm not good enough" that you don't even realize you're whispering to yourself until someone shouts loud enough to hear over it. The way you've avoided getting too close to anyone your whole life because you're afraid of what they'll find out, only to realize it when suddenly you find yourself alone. An unhealthy attachment to anything that keeps you from feeling what you're really afraid of: yourself.
These patterns develop young and they develop fast. They are our coping mechanisms, from times when we knew of nothing else. But the longer we let them fester the deeper their roots grow; and the greater the axe needed to fell them.
I began realizing that I was telling myself I would never be good enough a long time ago. When I only spent two months in Europe instead of ten, I wondered why I couldn't get it together to be gone longer. When I began showing my work in galleries in Chicago, I told myself it should be New York. When I lost my apartment, I berated myself for not having the Next Big Plan waiting on standby. And every time I cling to those not at what I know my awareness and intelligence to be (in my head, at least), I am simply mirroring how I feel inside. As not worthy.
Personal demons are a goddam bitch, to be frank. Of course I know where they came from, now -- after years of examination, processing and patience with myself (I may be stretching on the patience part). But that doesn't mean it's not a daily practice of retraining my thought processes to believe otherwise. I'm proud to say that now I think I'm pretty fucking awesome...most of the time.
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