fitveggielife

What do you wake up saying to yourself in the morning? Every morning? 

“I need more sleep.” “I’m still tired.” “I’m heartbroken.”

It’s time to change the narrative. It starts the moment I wake up into my conscious self. 

This morning it’s a fight between good and evil. Noises irritate me; water dripping on the roof, my dog smacking her lips, the chickens clucking, birds chirping, the heater with its incessant whoosh. My stomach is tightening up, like two fists threatening to fight, “LET ME BREATHE!,” I shout back. I focus on my breathing, then. I feel a moment, a glimpse of peace, and grip too tightly–it’s gone–but I know it’s there. That space is the goal. My body isn’t in charge. 

I feel like biting someone’s head off, but to give in to that rage means choosing that path, and all that comes with it. Evil. 

How often am I choosing evil? 

It is an easy road. It is the path of least resistance, although… it doesn’t necessarily feel easy. It feels like breathing fire and glass, like destruction, like feeding on others’ souls. God, and it’s sitting there on my shoulder, beckoning me. 

That notification might be him. 

You’re not in control. See how quickly you turned your head? 

A coach rooting for my downfall, spiral into their hands to play with like a puppet. 

I am not a puppet. 

You’re pathetic!

We can’t get rid of the person squatting above our shoulders, not completely. But it isn’t just them. There’s another voice, a much quieter one, but it can conquer with patience and practice, with awareness, with responsibility. I’ve given in before, possessed by the lullaby of evil, but I don’t have to continue choosing it, not if I can help it, and I can help it. 

Yeah right.

So I hear, not listen, to the evil words, they rest like putrid rot in the base of my stomach, bringing tears to my eyes, but I won’t move. I won’t take action in this state, I won’t succumb to the rage they fill my body with, the whispers of lies, deceit, betrayal, and hatred they spin the world with. I am not that. 

You think you can get rid of me?

To lean into evil is to lean into a path already walked. It’s not unknown or new, it’s paved with souls of people who listen, I know what I’ll become. I realize that to walk where I aim to go, is to walk in darkness, unseeing and maybe alone. If I take my time, if I listen, if I breathe, I can find the way. A way that will multiply for the better anything that can be found on the paved road. I’ve got to have faith in myself. 

It doesn’t mean the bad feelings don’t exist, or that I’ll never have a bad day. I am still human, but it means I can handle and look at those things with patience and practice responding with love or no response rather than being swept away. That’s the natural thing to do, to get caught up, to become our circumstances, but we create them. We are the creators if we want to be. IF we can conquer the devil on our shoulders. If we can conquer ourselves. 

You’re a fraud.

I don’t acknowledge the evil this morning, despite the gripping of my organs, the hand around my throat, the tears in my eyes, I’m not going to become death and destruction. I can wait it out with my middle finger up and breathe, “I’m in control mother fucker.”