He used to haunt me.

He used to haunt me - or, more accurately, possess me. Every movement, every thought, every word I spoke - he was there, in the hairs on my neck, in the dark empty space between my brain and skull. He whispered there. Telling me I was weak, pathetic, selfish, wrong.

I've exorcised him from my waking mind, but underneath that, in the subconscious ooze where dreams slither and creep, he's still in control.

Sometimes he's kind. He'll only appear as a peripheral threat, a frightening shadow in the corner of my dream. Sometimes he's brutal - chasing me around the landscapes of my psyche, breaking down the barricades I erect between us, snatching the golf club or baseball bat from my hands, killing me as my mother stares on with dead eyes. I scream. I beg him to stop. I beg my mother for an explanation - why does she do nothing? Why does she always do nothing?

Usually though, he just walks in where he's unwanted - just to show that, under the superficial veneer of growth and healing, in the uncontrollable parts that are my purest self, he still has me. I scream at him to leave. I push him. I cry.

And then I wake up to my now-safe life. The constant terror of childhood is now relegated to the back room of my mind - gone from my waking life and into the stuff of nightmares. And I'm grateful for this massive improvement.