Two-Faced Pride

"We stop looking for monsters under the bed when we realize they're inside of us."

                                                                                                                                     -Jordyn Berner

Pride is like oxygen,
Something I can never let go of.
I push it though my veins
And let it nourish me.
Like oxygen,
It feeds me; it keeps me alive.
I convince myself
That I am greater than I am,
That I am stronger than I am,
That I am controlling and powerful.
But in reality,
It sucks the life from me.
Unlike the oxygen that ages me,
Pride makes me childish.
It makes me stubborn,
It makes me arrogant,
It makes me unfeeling.
It shuts me away
From the humanity I long to be part of
And from the love I long to feel.
It is my means of survival,
And yet it is killing me.

Me, Myself, and the Monsters In My Head

I'm back.
I didn't think I'd ever be
Back to the start
Yet here I am, once again
Fighting monsters in my sleep

I'm tossing and turning
Trying desperately
To cling onto the last glitter of night
Before my nightmare
Envelops me and drowns me
In its murky waters
Even though I know how to swim

What happened to my dream,
My beautiful piece of paradise
I held a glimpse in my hand
A moment ago
Now it's a broken shard of glass
That leaves scratches in my palms

If I listen closely I can hear
The whisper of sand
Fall through tiny cracks
Like the ones between my fingers
Stealing away the seconds
That make up the hour
That fall far too quickly into
The bottom half of the hourglass,
Into a memory.

So here I am.
Standing atop a mountain
Made of finely grounded happiness
Armed with only a sword
Hand-crafted from fragments of nightmares
To face the monsters in my own mind.