Samurai

I am not my Ego. But sometimes it’s all I am.

Sometimes I’m that fearful voice telling me to stop and get back,
Back to the cozy cocoon I was once in,
Back to denials and excuses, the numbing out of
everything that makes me feel alive.

I am that schoolyard bully,
Reason says don’t be silly! He’s just a child
but still brings tentacles of fear down
your spine even today.

At times I become social media,
succumb to comparisions
Who wore it best? Get lost in
the addictive business of keeping count.

Sometimes I fight, a lone Samurai
hell bent on besting her demons
without and within. I am all joshed up,
caught up in my struggle, not knowing
that the vampire never goes away.

She’s always there, my Ego, wounded
but living to fight another day.
She will always be looking, searching with her
heavily made up Cruella eyes for her next chance,
to strike me down, to make me come back to my
own cozy cocoon, my own version of doldrum hell.

Once or twice, I saw her when she was still
not ready for the day, in between her costume changes.
Why, she’s actually an older, beaten down version of me!
She looked at me, naked and terrifying in her true form.

An insecure parent, helicopter mother, she said:
“Child, don’t go. Don’t leave me, let me protect you.
The world is full of thorns, just thorns and blood,
let me decide for you.
Let me do the math of right and wrong for you.
I’ll keep you safe and numb in my thick web,
you’ll never have to feel again.
I was once useful to you, don’t banish me now.
Without you I am nothing.”

A friend (perhaps unknown to him but still)
once told me, “The Ego is a small circle in
the big sphere of the Self.”
I liked the geometry of the sentence.
And somewhat seasoned traveller that I am,
I have set out to explore the reaches,
peaks and valleys, plains and seas
of me.

Fare me well.

©Shweta Bhat