I have a shadow within me, and it’s as evil as it is dark.

Most of my life, I have ignored it and kept it deeply suppressed. Every time it emerged from the background noise of my cacophonous mind, it frightened me with its menace and malice and willingness to hurt others for its own amusement. So I shoved it back down all the harder, and went on thinking about how nice a person I was.

But lately, as part of my recovery process, this shadow has emerged from suppression and I find myself wrangling with it and feeling its presence a lot more. Not all the things that recovery un-suppresses result in life giving catharsis.

Some set up shop and stay.

And of course, part of me automatically wants to treat this shadow of mine as alien. That’s not me… that’s something else. I am a sweet, nice, compassionate, and empathetic person. I might have a lot of problems, but morally I am flawless. Any evil, therefore, must not be a part of me. It must be Something Else.

That, of course, is total bullshit. Everything within you is a part of you. Trying to label parts of your own mind as “not you” is not only false but dangerous to one’s sanity. It is literally impossible for there to be anything in your mind which is not a part of you, both physically and mentally. Such artificial divisions can only harm.

So my shadow is a part of me just like my compassion, my wit, and my love of cucumber.

What is it made of? Well, certainly rage is a major component. I have suppressed a very large amount of anger in my life. And when I say suppressed, I do not mean that I bit my tongue when I wanted to say something angry, or took a walk around the block to get my temper back under control.

No, I suppressed my anger so deep that I don’t even feel it. When bad things happened to me, I did not get angry, I just got sadder. The anger component was pushed so deeply into my subconscious that I wasn’t even aware that it was there.

But it was there alright. Suppressed rage is one of the most dangerous forces in the human mind, and as mine accumulated, it formed into the part of me I now call my shadow.

And that shadow wants to be fed. It wants me to express that rage through violent action. In my case, that would most likely be verbal. I could do a lot of damage with words. Words are my bitches.

That’s the problem with suppressing emotion. The longer you do it, the stronger the resulting beast gets, and in my current mental state, I am dealing with a heavily suppressed id that is stoked that it is finally getting attention, and wants to hurt and take and revel in its own power.

The other component to my shadow is, I think, a deep feeling of powerlessness. I have been a very passive person for all my life. someone who did not go out and explore and conquer the world of his own volition. Instead, I retreated into a world of video games, books, and eventually, the Internet, where I could stay in my room, safe from the big loud scary world out there.

That meant that I had a very weak will. The idea of wanting something, acting to get it, and then having it was largely absent from my life. I told myself that this was because of lack of money, and for the most part, that is true.

But it also came from a deep and terrible cowardice that kept me agoraphobic and homebound and unable to take part in any of the perfectly free activities, like going to a park or the beach, that were available to me. I was so crushingly afraid of the outside world that having to go anywhere filled me with panic.

And the thing is, that does keep a lot of bad things from happening to you. But the cost is way too high. Good things can’t happen to you either, and mere safety has never been enough for the human soul. It wants pleasure, it wants fun, and when it doesn’t get them, it starves.

So my shadow is made of impotent, suppressed rage, and it is closer to the surface than it has ever been, and I honestly don’t know what to do with it. I don’t want to be evil, I don’t want to hurt anyone. But the process of recovery demands that these long suppressed emotions find a voice and a way to express themselves in the world, and I do not know how to let that happen in a way that is not destructive.

Writing this blog entry is a start. Writing this had let out some of the pressure. It will be a little easier to be me for the next little while. But it’s hardly a permanent solution. I will have to find some way to let out all this rage.

I suppose I could write really violent and brutal horror stories. That’s one way to exorcise my own personal ghosts. Trap them on the page, knowing they will be released upon reading. It’s a form of violence against others, but one in which the people receiving the violence are doing so willingly, more or less.

Fair warning, gentle readers : if I pursue that form of release, you will be the immediate recipients, and you might be shocked at the sheer malice that comes crawling to the surface when I open up my barn door for a change.

I really wish I could somehow get to the post catharsis peace and happiness without having to do the actual catharsis. This is by far the hardest thing in my recovery for me to deal with. I can deal with sadness, trauma, neglect, abuse, or anything else that comes up. But this shadow of mine fills me with despair. How can I deal with it without becoming a monster?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.