Personal demons
For most of my life -- 66+ years or more -- I've been harried and hounded by what I have been told are simply parts of my own mind that don't behave properly. When I was three, one day I was playing in the back yard with my imaginary friends -- something perfectly normal -- when suddenly they turned on me, coming at me like a huge ball of utter, satanic malice. I screamed and ran into the house, and never played with my imaginary friends again. Why?
At age 7, one night something landed on my mind and began beating my mind up. The beating wasn't physical, but it was intensely mentally painful. All the while, whatever it was screamed at me, not audibly but directly into my mind, "Sell your soul to the Devil! Sell your soul to the Devil!" Which I knew was weird, since, while I had read the phrase in books and so on, my adoptive parents never mentioned such a thing, and my upbringing didn't include the concept. I decided to fall asleep -- and it started roaring at me, "IF you fall asleep, that will mean you sold your soul to the Devil!" I finally did fall asleep with that thing pounding on me. The following evening the whole thing started up all over again -- making it immediately clear that by falling asleep I had not sold my soul to the Devil, of course. Every single night from then on until I was about nine and a half the same damned thing went on, over and over. I never dared tell my adoptive parents -- they'd have decided I was crazy and have me put away for it. It finally came to an end one day for no particular reason. Why?
When I was three years old, I suddenly developed an instantaneous, reflexive reaction to seeing myself in a mirror. I despised what I saw -- I looked like a drip, stupid and weak and worthless. I have had that problem ever since. I can stand looking at my face in a mirror if I look at part of it at a time, as long as I'm not looking at my mouth, but that's all. And ever since, the only thing about me that I've been able to stand is my intellect. Everything else seems rotten and worthless. Why?
Starting at age 5 I began having horrific nightmares nearly every single night, the kind you fight to wake up from because you know that if you don't, something horrifying and revolting will happen to you. I continued to have such nightmares most of the time until I was in my 20s, and even then, though the frequency of them went down, they continued to happen. Only in the last few years have I been able to avoid them. Even then, my dreams have rarely been good, and are mostly depressing, sad, or embarrassing. Often I'll dream of being hated by everyone for things I'm never sure of; I have an overwhelming feeling of guilt, but am not sure what I'm guilty of. In others, I've murdered somebody, and have been successful at hiding that fact, but feel intense guilt for it. I dream of losing my cats and of men trying to rape me and a thousand other ghastly things. No matter how deeply I sleep -- and now I do, I'm taking large amounts of Trazadone for that -- my dreams leave me in a bad way, infuriated, or in mourning, or in some other pit of Hell. Why?
And for most of my life I've been beaten up constantly by things that are probably nothing more than part of my own mind, but which have tremendous malice toward me, and which sabotage me in every way they can. One is female, apparently; the malice she harbors has nothing behind it, there is no good reason for it other than her enjoyment of it, which she wallows in. The other is male, and psychopathic. They would kill me in a minute if they were able, and seem to have no feeling that if they killed me, they might be jeaopardizing their own existence. They both despise me, but do so not because they have any good reason to, but rather because it allows them to feel superior to me, just because. The female one somehow manages to plant her hand palm-down against my back when I'm walking or hurrying down the street and give me a push at exactly the wrong moment, so that I collapse on the sidewalk or street, face-first. Once I broke my nose that way. Another time, my glasses. Why?
In the summer of 1963, when I was eighteen and engaged to a wonderful young man, the male one of those things began roaring at me -- inaudibly, directly into my mind -- over and over, that I'd better drive my fiance away or something horrible would happen to him. I decided to believe that whatever it was didn't exist, and it got madder and madder. Then, on Augut 6, three weeks before we were to have been married, Evans, my fiance, was driving down from Moreau Bay, California, where he was working a construction job to get the money to pay for our honeymoon, to a motel room he was temporarily renting in San Luis Obispo during the week (he saw me on the weekends then). As he started across the very narrow bridge that connects Highway 101 to San Jose, at that moment a car coming the other way turned onto the bridge at high speed -- and rammed Evans' car, a Corvair with the engine in the back, head-on. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel at just that moment. The steering column of Evans' car was rammed back into Evans' chest, killing him instantly as it crushed his heart. This occurred at 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon. At the same time, I was in a foster home in Oak View, California; I'd been cleaning that day, and singing because I was so happy about my coming marriage. At 2:30, I suddenly knew it was all over. I crawled under the covers on my bed and huddled there in a black depression. I knew he was gone. Then my foster parents came home -- and the phone rang. It was Evans' parents, saying the Highway Patrol had just notified them of their son's death. From that day on, my foster parents began persecuting me and terrorizing me, and that thing had roared at me all summer that I'd better dump Evans now roared in triumph over me, saying, "I told you this would happen if you didn't obey me!" And since then I have had no one ever fall in love with me back, no one who truly loved me. Why?
Even my birth was . . . strange. My biological mother gave me up for adoption at 9 days old because she hated me, and said so to the social workers. My adoptive mother hated me because her husband had forced the adoption on her, then took her little dog, a lovely cocker spaniel, to the vet to be put down, telling her, "It might hurt the baby" (i.e., he got to have his baby, and she, who was barren, wasn't allowed to have hers). I was in two foster homes and both sets of foster parents hated me. Why?
I was bullied and bullied and bullied in school by other girls. In elementary school, a bully-pack of several girls led by a fat girl named Ellen who hated me for no known reason would follow me all over the playground every day, chanting, "Kill yourself! Kill yourself!" Nobody stepped in to stop it. I was terrified all the time. I would curl up in a remote corner of the playground, duck my head under my arm, and try to shut the world out. Nobody cared. Nobody stopped it. Why?
If this is all do to parts of my own mind attacking me, that sort of flies in the face of human biology, doesn't it? If I do, those parts of me do, too. And yet they want me harmed and want me dead with everything they have, and despise me for not dying. It's as if God were punishing me all my life long for being born. It still goes on and on, with no comfort, no safetly, no reason for it. Why?
If you, dear reader, have knowledge of this sort of continuous persecution of the self by the self, how it arises, and how to bring it to a halt, would you please let me know in a comment? Thanks, Yael Dragwyla
At age 7, one night something landed on my mind and began beating my mind up. The beating wasn't physical, but it was intensely mentally painful. All the while, whatever it was screamed at me, not audibly but directly into my mind, "Sell your soul to the Devil! Sell your soul to the Devil!" Which I knew was weird, since, while I had read the phrase in books and so on, my adoptive parents never mentioned such a thing, and my upbringing didn't include the concept. I decided to fall asleep -- and it started roaring at me, "IF you fall asleep, that will mean you sold your soul to the Devil!" I finally did fall asleep with that thing pounding on me. The following evening the whole thing started up all over again -- making it immediately clear that by falling asleep I had not sold my soul to the Devil, of course. Every single night from then on until I was about nine and a half the same damned thing went on, over and over. I never dared tell my adoptive parents -- they'd have decided I was crazy and have me put away for it. It finally came to an end one day for no particular reason. Why?
When I was three years old, I suddenly developed an instantaneous, reflexive reaction to seeing myself in a mirror. I despised what I saw -- I looked like a drip, stupid and weak and worthless. I have had that problem ever since. I can stand looking at my face in a mirror if I look at part of it at a time, as long as I'm not looking at my mouth, but that's all. And ever since, the only thing about me that I've been able to stand is my intellect. Everything else seems rotten and worthless. Why?
Starting at age 5 I began having horrific nightmares nearly every single night, the kind you fight to wake up from because you know that if you don't, something horrifying and revolting will happen to you. I continued to have such nightmares most of the time until I was in my 20s, and even then, though the frequency of them went down, they continued to happen. Only in the last few years have I been able to avoid them. Even then, my dreams have rarely been good, and are mostly depressing, sad, or embarrassing. Often I'll dream of being hated by everyone for things I'm never sure of; I have an overwhelming feeling of guilt, but am not sure what I'm guilty of. In others, I've murdered somebody, and have been successful at hiding that fact, but feel intense guilt for it. I dream of losing my cats and of men trying to rape me and a thousand other ghastly things. No matter how deeply I sleep -- and now I do, I'm taking large amounts of Trazadone for that -- my dreams leave me in a bad way, infuriated, or in mourning, or in some other pit of Hell. Why?
And for most of my life I've been beaten up constantly by things that are probably nothing more than part of my own mind, but which have tremendous malice toward me, and which sabotage me in every way they can. One is female, apparently; the malice she harbors has nothing behind it, there is no good reason for it other than her enjoyment of it, which she wallows in. The other is male, and psychopathic. They would kill me in a minute if they were able, and seem to have no feeling that if they killed me, they might be jeaopardizing their own existence. They both despise me, but do so not because they have any good reason to, but rather because it allows them to feel superior to me, just because. The female one somehow manages to plant her hand palm-down against my back when I'm walking or hurrying down the street and give me a push at exactly the wrong moment, so that I collapse on the sidewalk or street, face-first. Once I broke my nose that way. Another time, my glasses. Why?
In the summer of 1963, when I was eighteen and engaged to a wonderful young man, the male one of those things began roaring at me -- inaudibly, directly into my mind -- over and over, that I'd better drive my fiance away or something horrible would happen to him. I decided to believe that whatever it was didn't exist, and it got madder and madder. Then, on Augut 6, three weeks before we were to have been married, Evans, my fiance, was driving down from Moreau Bay, California, where he was working a construction job to get the money to pay for our honeymoon, to a motel room he was temporarily renting in San Luis Obispo during the week (he saw me on the weekends then). As he started across the very narrow bridge that connects Highway 101 to San Jose, at that moment a car coming the other way turned onto the bridge at high speed -- and rammed Evans' car, a Corvair with the engine in the back, head-on. The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel at just that moment. The steering column of Evans' car was rammed back into Evans' chest, killing him instantly as it crushed his heart. This occurred at 2:30 p.m. in the afternoon. At the same time, I was in a foster home in Oak View, California; I'd been cleaning that day, and singing because I was so happy about my coming marriage. At 2:30, I suddenly knew it was all over. I crawled under the covers on my bed and huddled there in a black depression. I knew he was gone. Then my foster parents came home -- and the phone rang. It was Evans' parents, saying the Highway Patrol had just notified them of their son's death. From that day on, my foster parents began persecuting me and terrorizing me, and that thing had roared at me all summer that I'd better dump Evans now roared in triumph over me, saying, "I told you this would happen if you didn't obey me!" And since then I have had no one ever fall in love with me back, no one who truly loved me. Why?
Even my birth was . . . strange. My biological mother gave me up for adoption at 9 days old because she hated me, and said so to the social workers. My adoptive mother hated me because her husband had forced the adoption on her, then took her little dog, a lovely cocker spaniel, to the vet to be put down, telling her, "It might hurt the baby" (i.e., he got to have his baby, and she, who was barren, wasn't allowed to have hers). I was in two foster homes and both sets of foster parents hated me. Why?
I was bullied and bullied and bullied in school by other girls. In elementary school, a bully-pack of several girls led by a fat girl named Ellen who hated me for no known reason would follow me all over the playground every day, chanting, "Kill yourself! Kill yourself!" Nobody stepped in to stop it. I was terrified all the time. I would curl up in a remote corner of the playground, duck my head under my arm, and try to shut the world out. Nobody cared. Nobody stopped it. Why?
If this is all do to parts of my own mind attacking me, that sort of flies in the face of human biology, doesn't it? If I do, those parts of me do, too. And yet they want me harmed and want me dead with everything they have, and despise me for not dying. It's as if God were punishing me all my life long for being born. It still goes on and on, with no comfort, no safetly, no reason for it. Why?
If you, dear reader, have knowledge of this sort of continuous persecution of the self by the self, how it arises, and how to bring it to a halt, would you please let me know in a comment? Thanks, Yael Dragwyla