The voices in my head like to gossip about me little cliques from a school a school of thought I attend daily.
They say never speak ill of the dead but what if it’s the dead that speaks leftover whispers from the depression gossiping ghosts I already buried.
It’s anxiety that gossips it’s intuition that simply breathes with fear you’re not the one talking you’re the one eavesdropping intently.
I will never be a victim to negative words there is no need to go mad or worry because the voices can’t talk behind my back when I can see them right in front of me.
You pick at your scabs just to watch them scab again so that when they heal over you’ll feel satisfaction but you’re only making yourself more susceptible to infection so don’t be surprised when the sickness seeps in and you long to inflict hurt for the sake of revenge as you wield a weapon and declare it’s medicine then wait and wait for the scabs, the reaction.
Somebody who needs others to know they have healed is not healed. Somebody who needs to create hurt to feel healed is not healed. Somebody who picks at their scabs so they can scab again is not healed.
The Damsel & The Demon is a poetry/fantasy story hybrid (verse novel) meant to be an allegory for the healing process, whether that be healing from addiction, a toxic relationship, a traumatic event, or anything in between. Valerie drew inspiration from her personal struggle with obsessive compulsive disorder and anorexia to create this Allegory for Healing through the lens of the main character, Daphne. For both Daphne and Valerie, fleeting feelings can only exist as fixations, and the rhythmic stanzas of an internal dialogue, playing like poetry, is the conduit between the mentally disordered author and the hexed protagonist of this story. There is so much beauty in healing, but healing is still ever so messy, uncovering darkness where we expected light and vice versa. Determined to create this massive poem with no help from search engines or AI, Valerie made it her mission to come up with every rhyme on her own; turning to the internet for help was forbidden. As a result, The Damsel & The Demon is an authentic fantastical dark fairytale scripture rich with revelations and an aim to help readers everywhere see themselves in the damsel archetype as well as the ailment they struggle to separate from in the demon.
Valerie Parente is a writer and artist from Massachusetts whose bodies of work often explore the theme, “Finding beauty in darkness” and general mental health awareness.
I used to curse my teenage self for wanting to be sick in the head. 30 years old and I finally comprehend that anybody who wants to be sick in the head is already sick in the head.
How many people roam around the world trying not to be triggered because the everyday man in the everyday trance doesn’t understand that the recovery phase isn’t the same as unfazed.
It creeps up on you these triggers in the middle of a good day with a smile on your face but you’re not okay and the others don’t have a clue that there’s a weapon inside of you in the shape of a thought waiting to be set off.
Therein lies the trickiness of mental illness; it’s invisible to everyone else so we never know when we trigger it.
But there’s a beauty in you that should be mentioned; that you don’t go around the world being unaffected.
Your triggers make you human through and through because what is a flawless mind but a lesser version of me and you.
Your mind was still your mind when you were too young for words. You were someone before you could define anything in this world. That’s how I know when your thoughts are unkind it is something separate that creates the hurt. You are the thing behind the whispers that float forth.
You are not the voices in your head, you are the choices you make after hearing them.
Temptation isn’t temptation without a moral compass and sin isn’t sin without omniscient justice. But who gets to say what is and isn’t forbidden? Who are you really spiting with the apple you’ve bitten? How can you say my nature is evil if I was created in His image then turn around and say He loves me without any conditions?
I’ve deprived myself long enough thanks to willful ignorance, starved myself thinking I would be different, felt the bones of my ribcage with blind commitment, realized I lost half my life to a sick and twisted vision, then rose from the dead with a whole new mission; I will sink my teeth into fruit regardless of permission.
Mermaid Hair & A Little Black Dress by Valerie Parente
Mermaid hair and a little black dress one for my inner child one for her last breath.
Because I wasn’t ready to grow up just yet so when I felt wronged I found poetic justice.
They said “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and I said “a girl with mermaid hair” for all the times as a kid that I was too scared of the fateful hour glass and its ground of sand so I stuck my head in the clouds not all quite there regressing and digressing into my own fairy tale.
They said “dress as the impression you want to give” so I wore a little black dress ’cause black goes with everything and I’m an artist breaking down reality so it all makes sense to little kid me and the woman she respects so that one fateful day the heart in my chest will end its marathon with little to no regrets.
