Beast

The beast has come to visit again.

Here I am at 2:55 in the morning, fighting was feels like an ulcerative stomach ache, going round and round in circles in my head about my worth.

I've felt this before. Many times. So frequently, in fact, that I'm medicated and have been for about 6 years now. Hundreds of dollars of talking therapy have gone into beating this beast.

But somehow, he always manages to get back in my head. "Come for a visit," I seem to say, "Sit down for a while. Let me make you some cookies while I listen to everything that you say."

Anxiety.

It really can be a beast.

It's a nasty creature that rears its head and tells you illogical fallacies, coated in just enough truth to confuse the heck out of you so you don't know what is true and what isn't. It gets you inside it's net and drops you to the ground, so you're on your knees or sometimes your stomach, pleading for truth to be made manifest.

The lies can be really nasty sometimes.

"You have no self control at all, and you will kill yourself slowly (after you get fat) with how poorly you eat. Any boy that is attracted to you is attracted to a lie- you are not fit," the beast scoffs, citing the sugar intake of the last 2 1/2 weeks, conveniently forgetting how hard I have been working to finish an entire half of a 3 credit course, all of the budgeting work I have done, the salads I have eaten, and the huge amount of night shifts I took on this break in order to earn money for the next semester.

"You lack any sense of emotional stability. No wonder you feel so alone; everyone in your family can see that you are too broken to be loved anyways. You're lucky you have me to tell you the truth about it all," the beast screams the first part, causing intense fear to well up inside of me, and then slowly whispers the second part as he turns his back on me and walks away, leaving me utterly alone.

"Your mom thinks you are a wreck. You shouldn't have talked to her about our conversations yesterday. I've just been visiting for a couple of days. Why can't you just deal with me on your own? This is why your family feels like they need an army to keep you functioning. Seriously do you want me to go back and cite the time you lost 40 pounds in just a few months because you were too stressed to eat? No other stable adult calls their mom crying, Elise. No other person deals with emotions through expression, and certainly no other person has nearly as many emotions as you do. You are too much emotional work for anyone to deal with in their lives," I cry as the beast goes on and on with that one.

"You lack any real talent artistically. Those stupid paintings you make for people are ridiculously childish. They don't actually like them- they aren't complex enough. They are so sloppily done. I can't believe you would be silly enough to give them out. You just want validation anyways, and everyone can see that. You don't do anything just to make others happy. I'm here to help you see how much of a fraud you really are. Oh, and that whole medical school thing you are working towards? Who do you think you are?! Don't you know you have ANXIETY? I can stop you from doing anything, Elise. You won't be strong enough to do something like that. And you will ruin your chances of having the family God wants you to have if you do it," I hear him out on that one. I hate that one. Every part of it. It tells me I have no talent, no worth. That I'm selfish and egotistical. The interesting part is that by believing that one, I become more selfish and egotistical because I'm more worried about myself and my own problems than the people around me.

I get nasty when I feel like 'the truth' has been discovered and people say or do things around me that seem to hint that what the beast says is true. I fight the beast all day long, every day it sometimes seems. I tell him that I'm lovable and capable and worth more than what he says. I'm loved in my family. I'm worth my friends' time. I don't have to pay people to stay in my life or to want to be with me.

It's okay to be under construction, I tell that stupid beast.

Sometimes I just wish he would go away.