The Fury

(08/07/08)

In A Million Little Pieces James Frey refers to his as The Fury. Eckhart Tolle refers to it as the Ego, others call it the Storyteller. Whatever you want to call that inner voice within us, that wreaks havoc on our self-esteem & confidence, and makes us behave strangely when we're scared, we all have it.

Eckhart Tolle's philosophy is to realise that this voice is not actually you, but something separate that feeds on your pain, and as soon as you start to observe it & recognise that it isn't you it will start to disappear. I am normally quite good at observing mine & realising my destructive thought patterns are down to my ego, but currently I'm struggling.

Sometimes in life it feels like things are going too well & something is a little bit too perfect. Add some alcohol to the mix & suddenly that Fury buried deep within you will start to actively sabotage things. It makes you act in the weirdest of ways, to try & destroy the great things you have - because after all - it thinks you don't deserve your current luck.

Take last week - I had a few days that were simply some of the most incredible of my whole life. I'm not going to go into details, just take it from me, they couldn't have been more perfect. I could feel the Fury start to fire up within me, start the doubting process once more that there *must* be another explanation, things weren't what they seemed because how could they be? I don't deserve things to be this good! Once those doubts have started to creep in, you start looking for things to prove those doubts, and if you look hard enough you may be able to convince yourself they're there.

It's only once you've let the Fury kick in & the pain has already been caused that you realise that things were actually what they seemed, before you let vindictive Mr Fury join the party. But now he has he will have invoked his Furious friends in the bodies of those you've upset. A vicious circle indeed.

And now the Fury in me won't let me have a moment's peace. Not only is he telling me over & over what I did wrong & how I was an idiot, but he won't let me sleep, smile or laugh. And that's exactly what he wants, and I know this, but I can't seem to break the destructive thought pattern. He's telling me over & over that I always drive people away, I'm not worth sticking around, everyone always leaves in the end.

I mustn't let him win. But right now it's 2.30am, I have another bout of insomnia (partially caused by bad jet-lag ettiquette) & I'm fighting a losing battle. I know I'm not the only person to have ever felt this way, people have done a LOT worse than the stupidly idiotic thing I did and in time this feeling will pass. Right now though I feel like my soul will never stop aching.