Catching Idle Butterflies

A monster in my brain!

It’s a sickly green, this thing, covered from head to toe with little poisonous spines you think at first glance as being hair or fur. It walks on two, short, thick legs and clawed feet. Black shiny spikes poke out of its hunched back. It’s arms are thin, wiry and so long they almost drag on the ground, and each ends in a five-fingered claw, perfectly designed to latch on to something and never let go unless it so desires. It has four glowing, slit green eyes, one on each side of its head so it can see in all directions. Its sharp hooked nose is more sensitive than a canine’s, able to sniff out the smallest weakness in character. It has no ears; it doesn’t care to listen to anything others have to say. It has sharp, hollow teeth oozing the same yellow poison dripping from its spines, a black forked tongue inside a slit of a mouth just large enough to whisper into its victim’s ears.

But it’s not that big, barely the size of your pinky nail. Sometimes it can be even smaller, say the size of a hair follicle. It can change its size and shape at will, worming its way into the darkest corners of your mind, places that you don’t pay much attention to. It’s sneaky that way, attacking where you’re most vulnerable.

But once that little monster enters that secret place and takes up residence, it’s harder to get rid of than cockroaches. Left alone, it grows and multiplies, releasing tens if not hundreds of other little monsters into the psyche, equally as poisonous as the original, setting up homes in other secret places you might not have known existed until they show up and begin making themselves comfortable.

Be careful at how you fight this thing, for it can defend itself, using your thoughts, dreams and fears against you, reminding you of all your past failures and how success will always be out of reach.

“See,” it whispers. “You only fail because that person is better than you. See all that talent compared to yours? Yours is nothing, pathetic! Forget that he’s your friend. If he really liked you, he wouldn’t be showing off in front of you, now would he?”

This statement varies from one situation to the next, but the end result is always the same if you chose to listen. That little whispered envy turns to hostility and only destruction, whether it be relationships or something else, is all that remains.

The solution, er, well at least a solution?

Shameless plug here, folks:

Selling Me Short  (E) Sometimes God teaches us a lesson in an unexpected way. #1011924 by vivacious

I’ve had to read this article over again yesterday, because I felt that little monster try to manipulate me into feeling jealous over other people’s blogs. I know, silly. After all, people do read and enjoy my blog based on it’s own merits, not because it’s better or worse than someone else’s (That’s not to say it couldn’t be improved, but that’s another entry). With the variety of life experiences, interests and how people write is too individual to compare one to the next.

But nothing about envy is logical or common-sense-ical, which is why it’s so hard to get rid of.

Aside:

I want to thank sentimente for his suggestions on how to liven up a blog in this week’s Blogville: "Invalid Entry" . I couldn’t have written this without them!