Monsters

Everyone has their demons.  Some are external, some are internal.  Some haunt actively, others passively.  Some are persistent and torturous, others spontaneous and opportunistic.  Whatever they are, however they behave themselves, I think that everyone has demons.  And they're not necessarily quantifiable entities.  Sometimes it's just a feeling that strikes.  A mood that comes over you that's hard to escape.  Or maybe that's mental illness...I'm not sure, I have a hard time telling the difference sometimes.

Mine have teeth.  Fangs, I guess you could say.  As soon as I am relaxed enough, once my thoughts are allowed to roam, they puncture right through my skin and poison me.  I can feel it spreading through me.  First one thing goes sour then everything follows.  It starts as a tiny bruise and ends in organ failure.  Figuratively, of course.  These demons slowly poison me.  And I'm never sure if I want to tear them out of myself or if it isn't better that way.  If maybe the fact that I let them in means that I can't take care of myself, that I'm better off relinquishing myself to these thoughts.

I think it's ironic, really.  The more I think these thoughts, the less I give in to them.  I indulge myself.  I tempt myself.  I try to see just how bad it can get without me giving in.  And I haven't given in, which really surprises me, honestly.  I'm not known for my self control.  If anything, people are more familiar with my indulgences of odd thoughts and fancies.

I don't know what's going on in my brain right now.  All of these signals constantly firing.  The connections between nerves.  I can picture the net of nerve cells that is inside of my head, and I wonder how it works.  I wonder if something is broken because something's firing incorrectly.  I'm incorrect.  I'm not sound from an evolutionary perspective.  If we were animals, I would have died out long ago.  Nobody with this kind of thought process does well at passing on their genes.  And so I'm sure that I won't either.

I've been told that the gene pool would benefit from having my genes in it.  I've been told many things, ranging from my intelligence to my physical appearance.  And people have commented repeatedly that I have good genes.  But if these genes are so damn good, it doesn't look to me like they want to go anywhere.  They seem perfectly happy to die with me.  And really, if anything, I'm a blend of excellent genes and rotten ones.  I'll take my chances and spare any potential offspring of mine the trouble of controlling the rotten ones.  The ones that make me broken.

I like the word broken.  It doesn't mean that something's unfixable.  It just means that it isn't currently fixed.  Broken isn't a permanent state.  Necessarily.  I think that broken things can sometimes be more valuable.  Think about children's toys.  The only pristine ones are the ones that sat on shelves and never got played with. It's the broken ones that were handled and loved.

That's all we are.  We are each other's toys.  We get played with and used.  And some are rougher on their toys than others.  And sometimes people, like things, just break.  I give up on trying to draw a metaphor here.  I don't know what I'm saying.  The nerves are firing incorrectly again.  I can't tell what I'm trying to think, although I'm sure there was something.  But I don't know.