My Other Half
Oh how you love to toy with me -
Deceive me,
Turn the most innocuous situation into a potential for disaster.
You play me like a soap
Turning joyous moments to anxiety and tension in a second,
Tightening my gut like the strings on a guitar
And racing my heart towards a finish line that never comes.
You are my overbearing other half
Battling for control,
Wringing and twisting my thoughts into
Sweet whispered fears
That drive me on a mental silent roller coaster to despair,
Convincing me how flawed I am,
How useless,
How everyone knows it,
Demanding I do more to prove you wrong,
But more is never enough,
And I will always fail.
You beat me
Deeper and deeper inside myself
Further away from reality,
Stopping every attempt to verbalise my inner self
With a metaphorical finger to my lips
And a hand around my throat to choke the words.
You are the fear itself that I was warned to fear.
Hateful, insidious, creeping, debilitating, manipulative, lying, self-defeating, catastrophising, shameful, agoraphobic fear that I cannot escape
And I can’t comprehend why you treat me this way,
My other half.
For you are a part of me.
There must be a way out of this.
Part 1 of a 2 part poem - January 2016
