I am far from perfect,
but I’ve always had a knack in fact for perfectionism;
life hardly feels worth it,
and my heart stays black with the lack of an exorcism.
Overly critical demons have always haunted me…
laughing like it’s funny, they have always taunted me.
I went to find some help so I can go be free,
and the woman with the pen says I have OCD.
I told her I’m aware of this, I’m haunted as we speak,
I kneel to these intruders and their wanton cruel critiques.
I try to quell their voices in the darkness, I assured her,
but she told me what she meant was that I have a cruel disorder.
“What were you talking about?” she asked me, quite quizzically.
“My overly critical demons who harass me metaphysically.”
The world is against me
and it’s me they’re out to find,
and I forget that every person
cannot see into my mind
and they don’t know what might disturb my peace
or cause my head to ache,
or make me strangely frustrated
and want to scream and break.
But therein lies the problem here,
like Buddy, Santa’s elf
I need to take a trip somewhere
so I can find myself.
but my overly critical demons
will start screaming and they’ll shout,
then I’ll know it’s time to go
and start to fixate somewhere else.
My overly critical demons, moping,
hoping that no one sees them, coping
with the fact that I want freedom, roping
me inside of their treason, I’m scoping
out a new plan to leave them, knowing
they will make this easy, no way.
Different sections, messy poem,
keep it going, that’ll show ‘em,
first come thoughts on which I fixate
then compulsions I can’t get straight
they control me, keep me pacing
around the house while thoughts are racing,
it’s amazing that I can’t change it
it’s insane and some kind of strangeness.
Diagnosed and have some closure,
but this battle’s far from over.
It takes just three letters to describe me,
but entire books can’t show inside me.
Look, it’s like one thousand rubber bands
resting rather calmly in the palm of your hand,
and each time you’re triggered, put one on your head,
then the tension keeps building until you see red.
And this tension comes out as anger, but trust me…
it has nothing to do with you, it is just me.
Betrayed by my own mind and how the thing runs,
like a broken computer, a rotten apple; a pun.
So, if I seem to obsess on a subject you know why,
and when I wear hats I stare up to a cold sky,
and when I tell stories I add way too much detail
and I never can let insults go, let’s just be real…
I could make a whole list of my Os and my Cs,
but I already did that and it took me three weeks.
Plus I’m coping with trauma from childhood abuse
and I’m working my ass off to untie the noose.
So, I know I dissociate and live in my head,
all the while I exist, I use distractions instead
and live in this state of neither living nor dead,
but I’m trying to heal, grow, and get out of bed.
My overly critical demons obsess on the bad,
only quelled by the voices of folks like my dad,
my fiancé, my best friends, my therapist, my mom,
while I battle the demons they help keep me calm.
I feel the anger of one thousand demons
held in for decades, so now I am seething,
and the sorrow of one thousand crying wet eyes
held in for decades, let out to get by.
Breathe, Aaron, let them know that you’re okay…
not sure that I am, but I will pretend anyway.
These fucking overly critical demons
change their faces with the seasons,
I pretend that I have misheard
then obsess on what they whisper.
Shhh, it’s time to put this all to rest,
and start again tomorrow like today was just a test.
The writing I’ve done lately is too real for me to share,
but this is just a taste of what is going on up there.
I will keep on writing I just hope they don’t see me,
since my overly critical demons are what I call OCD.
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