I am not sure when they showed up. I never invited them in. They seemed to have just appeared. I don't remember one and then the other... I have always known them together, and I guess they have always been there. They can't seem to be without the other.
They have lived inside me all this time, they reside in the recesses of my mind. They have found a home that is for sure and no matter what I do, they never leave. I will not name them for they know who they are, I just wish they didn't know me so well.
These are they who represent both ends of the moral spectrum. These are they who both think they know what I should hear, what I should know and what I should do. They seem to know things I don't. They have an uncanny sense of knowing when to show up....often during change. They feed off of the "valley of despair".... that place I call the "dip" where confusion, anger and frustration live. They both have much to say.
When I get wound up the most is when I find the one on the right... barking loudly to me of all the things I deserve, that I should have, that I am justified in doing and having for my own. When I least expect it I hear the other on the left....also barking, but the message is different, it is less voracious, but very compelling and persistent. This one reminds me of what I know, what I feel, what I believe in ...of where I need to point my life. They take turns, but there are times when they don't..... they decide to go after one another.... sometimes I see them as an observer, wondering if they know I am watching... feeling the tension they create, wondering if either will back down. They both know what it tastes like to win, so they are emboldened to hold their ground. The trouble comes when I lose sense of who is right... how can they both sound right?! That is when I feel the most chaos inside... when they both bark so boldly and brightly.
Do you have dobermans? Maybe not dogs, maybe something else.... but do you know these actors in your mind's stage? They read their lines a million times, but you still haven't heard a thing? Rather you look for a way to avoid them, to drown out the barking by escaping to places in your mind and imagination where real answers are so elusive....The answers aren't ever in a place, rather, they are in you all the time....lingering waiting to see which one of the dobermans you end up listening to to coax out your choice.
Maybe you don't have them, but I do. They are very familiar to me, but we are not friends.... and yet somehow they have become part of my psyche and my soul. The conflict rages and then subsides..... in an endless continuous cycle like the perennial ebb and flow of the sea's tide.
Over time, as I have thought about them and their purpose, I have come to believe that I need them. I need the contrasting noise, I need to feel the pull one way and then the other, the familiar tug of suggestion until the moment of choice occurs..... They don't seem to keep score, but they never back down. They drive me crazy, they keep me sane..... they cripple me with honesty and crush me with lies. They remind me of the fight inside myself, the fight I hope to win...of who I need to be.
Yes, I have two dobermans....I hope yours are not like mine.....
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