Thereās a girl inside of me. Sheās the ideal me, my inner optimist. Sheās smart and happy and beautiful, and sheās so strong. She has to be, because she fights demons. Horrible things, with deep black eyes like the pits of their shriveled hearts and fangs and claws in lengthy points of sharpened misery.
Every day she fights them, and some days, like today, are harder, because no matter how much or how hard she fights the demons never, ever die.
She has an arsenal to fight these demons: armor of love, a shield of confidence, a sword of logic and rational daggers. But some days, like today, are harder, because everything has been stripped away from her. She has nothing but her hands to fight with and the skin on her knuckles is broken and bloody and sheās already so, so tired.
When she fights well she can make the demons quiet for a time, but some days, like today, are harder, because the demons can be very loud. They whisper terrible things, and the whispers are deafening. They tell her that she is fat and ugly, that very few people truly love her, that she is weak, and worse, they have proof.
āLook at what happened when you tried,ā they tell her, āYou failed miserably. How easily you were defeated, because you are weak. You will never be strong enough.ā
And she believes them. She knows that she is weak, but her one saving grace is that she is also stubborn. She continues to fight, because she sees no other option. No matter how low she is beaten, or how long it takes, she always gets back up. But some days, like today, are harder, because she canāt feel her legs to stand on anymore.
Those are the days that I most often struggle to hear her voice, but some days, like today, she screams. Even though she lies broken and bleeding, even though she hurts so badly, she sings to me. She rails and cries and shouts to be heard over the taunts and jeers of the demons. She reminds me of the days that I knew in the sun, of wild nights and ocean breezes, of feverish lips and campfire smoke, of fresh baked cookies and afterglow, of the sting of whiskey and music that shakes my bones. Somehow she pulls me up and gets me through when she canāt even stand herself.
So even though I know that I am not strong, not yet, and even though she thinks that she is weak, I know that she is strong.
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