Monsters: As children we check in the closet and under the bed and sleep once we are reassured that they are off terrorizing someone else.
I am grown up, but I still worry about monsters. They don’t live under the bed any longer, they live in my brain and I call them Doubts.
Those buggers are dream killers and they seem to have super human powers to turn my brain against me….
They come in so many forms: a comment on a Facebook page, an off-handed remark, a perceived facial response.
They enter your being through your pores and manifest as doubt….their only goal is to kill your dream.
Why would my brain do that to me? Why would it give me Hope with one hand and then Doubt with the other?
The Doubt Monster had told me (and the bitch didn’t even whisper, she screamed), “You are an amateur Judy and everyone is going to know you are an amateur and you are a fraud and your book is a book of a fraud(y) amateur and not worth the paper it is printed on.” and then the Doubt Monster said that my, “friends are going to be forced to lie to me and say its good when we know it isn’t”
And I want to crawl into a fetal position beside my bed. I want to throw up.
She.is.SUCH.a.bitch.
The Doubt Monster is like one of the cool girls at school and the power that she holds over me is unlike anything I have felt before.
Doubt Monster: Calm, cool, calculating
Judy: Frazzled and sweating from a hot flash.
Yesterday I was completed mired in doubt and so I reached out to a friend.
My friend listened…..She let me know that the Doubt Monster comes to her brain frequently and that I am not alone. She told me that I have the right to be both attached to my book and scared by it.
She talked me down…..bless her. No, seriously someone should bless her because today is somewhat brighter and I am trying to remember her words when that mean girl “Doubt” attempts to enter my brain.
The Doubt Monster looks for a picked at edge to gain entry. She runs her hands over the surface until she finds a little rough spot, a little corner that has become raised and frayed and then she picks and picks and picks.
It’s hard to battle the Doubt Monster 😦
JUDY KUCHARUK 