Sexy Viking Man from my Subconscious
It’s Monday morning.
I snooze my alarm over and over... and over again. 59 minutes have passed from the time I told myself I was going to wake up. In 59 minutes, I could have done my daily ritual - breathing exercises, meditation, followed by journaling afterwards. 59 minutes more of sleep means I’ve totally f*cked my schedule for the day.
God. Dammit.
If only I had jumped out of bed instead of hitting the snooze button. I have no choice but to sacrifice some of the things on my list - the first things that go? My morning meditation, breathing exercises, and my afternoon run - I simply don’t have time. I’ll have to do it tomorrow.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I hate it when I sleep in. More than that, I hate it when I tell myself I’m going to do something and I don’t do it - I don’t follow through. When I don’t follow through, the uber critic comes out to play.
So what do I do?
Well, there are two options for me - I could either marinate in the self hate and criticism all day long, telling myself I’m a piece of shit and useless… or choose to amuse myself with it.
Let’s amuse ourselves for a moment…
Imagine jazz music playing in the background. Candles all around us as we sip spicy chai tea on some velvet cushions. I am massaging his head, my dainty fingers running down his long blonde locks, braiding his hair in between tea breaks.
Mmmm, I love his long hair.
He looks up at me and smiles, the “I’ll love you forever and always” type of look. My heart drops to my stomach as I smile back at him, our eyes locking for minutes at a time. We stay up all night pretzled in each other’s embrace - giggling, smiling, and sipping on chai.
I introduce you to sexy blonde Viking Man. He has come around for years and years. However, our relationship wasn’t always so warm and inviting.
The tall blonde sexy Viking Man can also be a raging, uber critical, Tyrant:
“What the f*ck are you doing?!?!”
“I can’t believe you let yourself snooze 59 minutes.”
“You’re entire schedule is all messed up now!”
“God. You’re so stupid, so lazy.”
If you’ve ever been in an emotionally abusive relationship, or know anyone who has, you’ll know that it’s not as easy to tell the signs that it’s abusive. Sometimes the abuse can be so sneaky, under the rug, brushing it off as, “oh, this is just what he/she/they do… it doesn’t mean anything”.
The venom sinks into the skin so effortlessly because there’s no awareness of it being a problem in the first place, it’s just “normal”.
As the Russian philosopher G.I. Gurdjieff said,
“If you wish to escape from prison, the first thing you must realize is that you are in prison”.
I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. So who is this Tyrant Viking man anyways?
I’ll let you in on a little secret - he’s not a real person. Never was, never will be.
The Tyrant Viking is a character I had to create in order to separate myself from the abuse that was spinning around in my mind. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with myself. Consumed with what I wasn’t doing, what I needed to do more of, should’ing all over myself at every opportunity. Anyone else have these types of thoughts?
I needed to separate myself from these voices by creating one voice and playing with it.
So what did I do? The next time I realized these voices were coming up, I finally stopped to ask myself,
“SAYS WHO!?”
I mean really, who the heck is saying this crap? So, I did what I felt was the proper way of handling it. I took the mindf*ckery and created the Tyrant Viking. I gave him a different platform so he could have his own stage and stop suffocating mine.