LEVIATHANS

I know now why I hate you! You remind me of the very monster I try so desperately to escape! I have tried everything to escape him for fear that I will cave if ever I meet him. I don’t want the monster here. For me, that instinct is nothing more than a monster in my eyes. It haunts me everywhere I go and I can’t escape him! He’s in my sleep, forever brooding in the shadows, ready to snatch me the moment my guard is down. There was a feeling, I wish, too often, I could forget. A horrible dark feeling that made me feel ashamed of what I am. I haven’t felt it in years. At least since I was 17. This feeling started in the pit of my stomach then crawled and slithered until my breasts burned with embarrassment. Eventually ending in my groin. It would last for hours, and all I was able to do was curl up in a ball and wait it out. It was bigger than me. It was stronger than me. And nothing I did seemed to rid of it. The best guard against it, was to avoid it at all costs. Finally, at 17, the monster stopped and time passed so that I hadn’t seen him in weeks. Then months passed before I realized the monster hadn’t been to see me. I realized then, that he was gone. Nearly forgotten, I reach into the bowels of my memory to recall the monster that no longer lurks in the darkness. 27 now, I am able to put a name to that monster. SHAME. Shame for being a woman. For being a female. Shame for feeling lust. When that shame took me over, I felt I was standing in front of every male in the world, naked, paralyzed, frozen to the floor. And there, I was ridiculed and jeered at. My breasts crept with a shame that made me hate having them, for that time that the monster slithered over my body. It was then, that I became a prude. It was then that I adopted conservative clothing, conservative ways, and propriety. I found, the closer to propriety I kept, the farther from the monster I became. Now, it has been ten years. I no longer am haunted by my shame. But the slightest reminder of what I once faced, plunges me into the strongest fear. Suddenly, I am faced with the shame, embarrassment, and guilt haunting me once more. I close off my senses. I’ll change the channel, turn off the movie, or cover my ears and shut my eyes. I’ll desperately close out all reminders that could possibly awaken the sleeping leviathan in the nearby shadows. My only comfort is with my husband and the loyalties that lay there. And yet, I watch, ever fearful of the leviathan that may once more awake to haunt me.