🖤 Between the Lines #13: To My Demons

I think the scariest thoughts are rarely the loudest ones.

The loud ones are easier to recognize.

They sound wrong.

Cruel.

Obvious.

You can point at them and say:

That is not helping me.

The quieter ones are harder.

The ones that sound logical.

Responsible.

Realistic.

The ones that know exactly which memories to pull out, which fears to touch, and which words will sound believable coming from your own voice.

That’s what this poem is about for me.

Not fighting some dramatic monster outside of myself.

Living with the thoughts that know me well enough to sound like me.

This is To My Demons.

---

To My Demons

You don’t knock.
You never needed permission.

You crawl in like smoke,
settle into my lungs,
make yourself at home
inside the parts of me
that are already tired.

You speak softly.
That’s how I know it’s you.

You don’t threaten.
You suggest.
You remind.
You replay everything
I wish I could forget
and call it self-awareness.

You tell me I’m realistic.
Prepared.
Not naive like everyone else
who still believes in light
without conditions.

You sound like me
on my worst nights.
You wear my memories
like a second skin.

I hate that.

I hate how convincing you are.
How you don’t need to shout
to make me doubt
whether staying is worth it.

Some nights
you sit beside me
and count my failures
like beads on a rosary.

Some nights
you tell me rest is dangerous.
That hope is reckless.
That peace is temporary
and I should brace for the fall.

You never push me.
You don’t have to.

You just wait
until I’m tired enough
to consider listening.

And still—
I wake up.

Not because I want to.
Not because I believe
tomorrow will be better.

I wake up because something in me
refuses to hand you the last word.

You hate that part of me.
The quiet resistance.
The way I keep breathing
even when it feels pointless.

You call it stubbornness.
I call it survival.

You can stay—
because I know you will.

But don’t confuse proximity
with ownership.

I am not cured.
I am not fearless.
I am not free of you.

But I am still here.

And that is the one thing
you can never forgive me for.

---

Between the Lines

This poem makes the demons sound almost polite.

And I think that is what makes them worse.

They don’t crash through the door.

They don’t scream.

They don’t announce themselves as something dangerous.

They already know where everything is.

They’ve been there before.

They know which memories hurt.

Which fears still work.

Which insecurities need almost no convincing at all.

And they don’t have to sound like monsters.

They just have to sound enough like me.

---

“You don’t threaten. You suggest.”

This might be the most important distinction in the entire poem.

A threat is obvious.

A suggestion can feel reasonable.

The demons don’t say:

Everything is hopeless.

They say:

Be realistic.

They don’t say:

Never trust anything good.

They say:

You’re just being prepared.

They don’t say:

Relive every painful thing that ever happened to you.

They call it:

Self-awareness.

That’s the trick.

They take fear and give it a respectable name.

They take hypervigilance and call it wisdom.

They take the expectation of pain and dress it up like preparation.

And suddenly the thing hurting you sounds like the thing protecting you.

That’s a dangerous voice to argue with.

Especially when it sounds like your own.

---

“You wear my memories like a second skin.”

The demons in this poem don’t invent evidence.

They use what already happened.

That matters.

Because fear gets a lot more convincing when it can point backward and say:

See?

See what happened last time.

See what they did.

See how badly that hurt.

See why you shouldn’t relax.

See why you shouldn’t trust this.

See why peace is temporary.

And the worst part is—

sometimes the memories are completely real.

The conclusion just isn’t always fair.

Something happened before.

That does not mean it has to happen again.

Someone hurt you.

That does not mean everyone will.

You survived something terrible.

That does not mean safety is a trick.

But when your brain has receipts?

It can make fear sound a whole lot like proof.

---

“You just wait until I’m tired enough to consider listening.”

I love this line because resistance takes energy too.

Sometimes people talk about survival like it’s this huge, heroic act.

Fighting.

Winning.

Standing tall.

Refusing to break.

But sometimes survival looks much less impressive from the outside.

Sometimes you’re just tired.

You don’t feel brave.

You don’t feel hopeful.

You don’t even necessarily believe tomorrow is going to be better.

You just don’t make the decision tonight.

That’s it.

You keep going long enough to see another morning.

And in this poem, that counts.

It has to.

Because there are nights when hope is too expensive.

So the speaker doesn’t survive because she suddenly believes everything will be okay.

She survives because something in her refuses to let the demons write the ending.

---

“You call it stubbornness. I call it survival.”

I really like that survival here is not pretty.

It isn’t inspirational.

There’s no dramatic music playing in the background.

She is simply still here.

And maybe stubbornness is underrated.

Sometimes stubbornness is:

No.

You don’t get this.

Not tonight.

You can sit there.

You can talk.

You can replay every ugly memory you have.

But you do not get the last word.

There is something incredibly small about that kind of resistance.

And incredibly powerful.

---

“Don’t confuse proximity with ownership.”

This is probably my favorite line in the second half.

Because the poem does not end with the demons disappearing.

That would be easier.

It would also be dishonest.

She says:

You can stay—
because I know you will.

That isn’t surrender.

It’s acknowledgment.

There is a huge difference between saying:

You exist.

and saying:

You own me.

She isn’t cured.

She isn’t fearless.

She isn’t pretending the darkness packed a suitcase and moved out.

It’s still there.

But being near something does not mean belonging to it.

Living with fear does not mean fear gets to make every decision.

Having dark thoughts does not mean those thoughts get to define you.

The demons can occupy space.

They just don’t get the deed.

---

Still Here

I think that is where this poem ultimately lands.

Not victory.

Not healing wrapped up neatly with a bow.

Not:

I defeated my demons.

Just:

I am still here.

And sometimes that is enough.

There is something almost defiant about surviving without turning survival into something beautiful.

Sometimes being alive does not feel triumphant.

Sometimes it feels annoying.

Messy.

Exhausting.

Stubborn.

But the demons don’t get to choose what counts.

They wanted the last word.

They didn’t get it.

Maybe tomorrow still won’t feel easy.

Maybe the thoughts will still show up.

Maybe peace will still feel temporary.

But the poem ends with the one fact they cannot argue away:

I am still here.

And maybe that is the whole point.

Until next time,

— Destiny

P.S. What’s something your fear has tried to convince you was “realistic” when it was really just fear talking? 🖤