Death to the invader!

Sometimes I wonder if there really is something called recovery.  This lapse has been drawing out for what seems like forever.  Even though I'm in a lapse it doesn't mean I'm back to where I was before treatment.  I'm still in a better place, but I've experienced something even better than this.

When I think I'm finally climbing my way out of the rabbit hole, something in life goes wrong and I slip down the hole again, the loose earth falls around me and scrapes my skin.  It gets tiring to climb and at times I just want to give up.  Then I think of my family and friends and know they want me to keep going, but I can't do it for them.  I have to do it for me.

I'm currently in a Gilbert and Sullivan show called Princess Ida.  One of my favorite parts in the show is a song called Death to the Invader.  Basically at this point in the story a women's university is under attack and the women decide it's time to fight and protect their castle.  We have to be angry and fierce, we have to be warriors.  Now there are already warriors as characters in this operetta and they do get to fight, live on stage (exciting!), but as we women are singing about deadly blows and tearing ranks asunder we get to feel what it's like to be warriors.  Our characters are holding battle axes as we march and prepare for a war.

In treatment I was given a battle axe.  At the time I didn't know really how to use it, although the treatment team did their best at training me.  It actually made me a bit squeamish in the beginning.  Me?  Fight him?  I hadn't found my confidence yet.  I could occasionally strike at ED and make him bleed, but later he would slink back in and thrust his lance into my back.  Then I fall to my knees and feel defeat.  I attend my wounds, practice my skills and try again.

I'm a visual person and all this time I wasn't using my imagination to its full potential.  

When I'm holding my axe and about to battle ED again, I'm an actual warrior.  I can imagine my armor, the weight of the axe, my heart beating fast, my thoughts as I calculate where I should strike first.  I can also hear ED's cackle and see his leer, but I've heard and seen it all before.  I'm ready for it this time.  And then...we fight.  We are going to have an epic battle, one that would liken the battles on Middle Earth.  I have my army and they are ready to fight with me.  They hold their weapons tightly, they know what they have signed up for.  This is truly a matter of life or death.  My life.

ED has his army; they're quite ugly and scary, but that is because there is nothing pure or honest about them and the evil has twisted them to look like the very darkness of their souls.

ED, you can't kill me while I stand here.  You can injure me many times over, but the one thing you weren't counting on was my perserverance.  I may grow tired, but I always have that small voice saying don't give in.

One of these days the epic battle will commence and I will end it by cutting your head off.