monster

Madness runs in my family.

My mother assures me that its power dilutes with each generation, so the worst I might experience is some anxiety or depression. I hope she’s right.

Because I’ve seen it for myself.

I’ve felt its insidious pull in the darkest corners of my mind. It rides waves of sadness and anger to the edge of my consciousness and whispers to me, You’re not good enough. Stupid girl. Worthless girl.

I heard it the loudest when I was a child, playing the violin. The very act of practicing, and for so many hours at a time, left open gaping wounds of mistakes through which the madness could seep.

Even now, it magnifies my faults and diminishes my triumphs. You’ll never be good enough. Stupid girl. Worthless girl. It can pull me under, drowning me in a whirlpool of my own self-pity.

Spitting me out onto a desolate landscape.

Stairway to Hell — Photo by Josh Van Cann

It’s easy to get lost here. Time moves differently in this place. Some people, desperate to escape, cut or starve their living bodies, so their souls can feel their way back to the world.

Luckily, I know a secret way out.

While I was caught in the wasteland as a child, I learned that the more I denied the madness, the stronger it would become; so I gave it a voice. I said the words out loud and listened with my ears to how silly they sounded: “You’ll never be good enough? Stupid girl? WORTHLESS girl? Ha!”

It was then that I discovered that the madness shrinks back when it sees its own reflection.

It used to be that I had to follow the dark path all the way down to the bottom before finding my strength. But now I leave signposts for myself. When the madness strikes, and I find myself falling inexorably into that labyrinth of despair, I reach out and find a thread.

I tug the thread and it tugs back and it hums with life and love. I follow it back to the world.

And I say to the madness: YOU HAVE DARKNESS, BUT I HAVE LIGHT. YOU HAVE NO POWER OVER ME.

And the madness recedes.

And waits.

This week’s Indie Ink challenge came from Jason Hughes:

The monster from your childhood that haunts you to this day, and how it still affects how you live…

You can read MyPlaidPants‘ response to my challenge here before the end of the week.

And I promise, I’ll have something happier to write later this week.

In our household, we have all sorts of characters doing domestic chores: our dish fairy will miraculously do the dishes overnight; the laundry fairy will take the dirty clothes downstairs and put them in the washing machine; and our trash goblin makes sure the trash gets taken out to the curb.

And we seem to have a gnome infestation as well.

Today, though, I spent a good amount of time in the garden talking to all the feral fairyfolk outside, including the compost monster, which is a friendly sort of beast that I feed kitchen scraps to. Some of them didn’t mind being photographed, so I thought I’d share my garden bounty with you.

Sage in foreground; behind that: lavender; in the very background, dill.

I also had some time to (finally) plant my herb garden, replacing the one I had cultivated two years ago, but which had been blithely mowed over by an overzealous yard worker last year while Ray and I were on our honeymoon. I didn’t have the heart to start over when we returned, but now I feel it’s time to turn over a new leaf (so to speak) with a new spot for my kitchen herbs.

My poor pond has been neglected for quite some time, and although the frog has lasted so far for about 4 years, I have not seen him this season, despite the fact that I had a little floating froggy home for him in the pond. It may be past time to clean the pond and populate it with new fish and tadpoles.

Oh, the pond needs to be mucked out, big time!!

Now that I am done with three months of nonstop singing, I can actually relax with a bit of pond-mucking. There’s nothing like getting in waist-deep into a pond full of partially-decomposed plant matter. Mmm.

Oh, yes, and Itchy was hanging out in his favorite catnap spot while I was puttering away. He, too, allowed me to take pictures, but only because he knew I was getting his good side.

Tag: monster

Feeding the Compost Monster