The Fight Inside of Me

I have come from a place of darkness. I have faced demons that only I can see nor hear and I have been the edge of life and death.

Sometimes, giving up can be as simple as not wanting to do something anymore. Or maybe it is when one stops doing something they are passionate about. However there some cases when giving up means just wanting to disappear even if it has to happen using my own hands.

This is article is about something that happened to me a few years ago. I still write about it because I am hopeful that by writing about it again and again, it will begin to lose its meaning. I ask people who are reading this to have an open mind. Thank you.

Maybe some of you relates to my story as well. Maybe some of you have felt the void consumes yourself and you are left alone, trying to find pieces of yourself that you can combine to become something resembling who you once were before.

I have talked about it in my past articles, the battles that happened between myself and the self I ignored. The battle that I still fight everyday.

I once read a Cherokee story about the two wolves within us. Below is an excerpt in the story of how a man teaches his grandson abiut the wolves inside him.

“It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil–he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”

He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you–and inside every other person, too.”

Then the question, "which wolf will you choose to feed?" will be asked. If you received this question, what will you answer?

Some of you might answer the good wolf because you want to be good. You want to be the light to someone else's darkness.

But the bad wolf will not go away when it is ignored. It will not simply retreat and disappear. No, it lies in wait. It watches for your time of weakness and then it pounces.

Now imagine if you both feed the wolves right. They will both grow stronger and balance each other out. Like the principle of yin yang, the bad wolf provides the good wolf some spine to stand up, and the good wolf provides the bad wolf a moral compass.

This is something that I have not been aware of back then. I was feeding the black wolf unknowingly and the white wolf suffers for it. I lived in regrets and self-pity, filled with so many what-ifs that I will never know the end of. Just living a lie instead of living in the present.

Slowly the darkness reached the bridges I built before, hiding them from sight until I was convinced that everyone left me behind. In my weakest, the black wolf that I nurtured turned on me, and started to devour every last bit of myself. However, I managed to find some light.

For the white wolf never lost its kindness even when I had chosen to ignore it. It helped me regain my strength, to push back against the darkness. It took a long time before I was somehow back to where I started. Two wolves waiting to be fed.

Now I know how dangerous the black wolf is. A part of me was agraid to give it strength again. I wanted to bury it and never allow it to see the light again. But I see the white wolf and all I feel is compassion. As if it knows that it cannot live without the other. So I fed them both. More for the white wolf at first, to make up for the years of being ignored. The black wolf is contented with the attention it received and the self-pity slowly went away.

Making sure the balance stays was difficult at first. One wrong move and the scale moves into one in favor. This affected me and my relationships but as time went by, balancing this fight becomes easier. The wolves are satisfied with the attention the received and I live not feeling on the edge everyday.

Hearing my story, what wolf would you feed?

You can find more of my articles by clicking this link:  https://read.cash/@ZehraSky/week-1-june-2021-articles-summary-6e15cf71

Feel free to browse through it, you might find something that is to your taste.

Thank you for reading and supporting me, everyone!