And we battle...

We stop checking for monsters underneath our beds, when we realize they are inside of us. I think there is a critical point in our development, for some it may happen in childhood, for lucky others not until adolescence when we realize we are their own demon.

You've heard it before and you will hear it again, "We are our own worst enemy." No statement ever rung more true. We cut ourselves down. We compare ourselves to others. We criticize. We self-sabotage. We set unrealistic standards. We berate ourselves. We are unforgiving. We are our biggest roadblock.

My therapist (yes, I have a therapist) calls it "The Voice." The dialogue in your head that you just can't squelch. Its the running commentary in your mind telling you that you look fat in those jeans, that your colleague doesn't want to go to lunch with you so don't ask, your spouse 'has' to compliment you, and at times goes as far as telling you that 'everyone else' is better/happier/skinnier/more accomplished that you are or ever will be. It is the voice that regularly reminds us that we are not everything to everyone (but we should be), we are not celebrity skinny (but we should be), we are not as good (at anything) as the next guy/gal (and never will be) and we aren't as smart as we could be (and eveyone else is, of course).

Since putting a name to it ("The Voice"), I wonder why we can't just tell it to shut the hell up and be done with it. Why is it more complicated than that? In my interpretation, the voice is a cumulative compilation of everything we have ever been told. The good things are a whisper, whereas the bad things are a shout. The amount of whispers may outnumber the amount of shouts, say tenfold or even twentyfold (that may or may not be a word), but one shout can drown out ten whispers as if they were never spoken. One shout can zap those whispers and draw the attention of all. All that remains is the echo of the shouting.

We would all be productive, ideal, stable, genuinely happy and make perfect sense- if it were simple enough to just tell the voice to shut the hell up and occassionally have to give it a quick reminder when it started to stir again. But, we are human and alas nothing is ever that simple. We have our demons; battle, battle and battle yet again, and rarely win the game.

We are our own monsters. Our adult minds are our childhood boogie man.