It can’t be real… it’s been buried inside with a lock, a lock that wasn’t meant to come free.

“Stop doing that, you’re exposing yourself!” It shrieks violently at me, causing the shrill of it to scatter my thoughts.

“Everything you’ve sweat for, that you’ve tried so hard to build for yourself is going up in smoke with those twisted thoughts of yours…”

My neck aches with stress, I ease my head forward, into my waiting hands… wondering what I should do.

When I was younger, I was tormented by my youth, by what it meant to be a teenager, a wild, free, participant of this world we live in. I experimented with myself, with others around me, with feelings and emotions but most of all control.

Control is something I never could get my hands around… it was always slipping away, just beyond my desperate grasp.

I found liberation through the use (abuse) of alcohol. I found that when the forgiving liquid entered my body, my bloodstream… it danced its way into my frightened, anxious mind and like magic, weaved its spell upon my motivations and inspirations and summoned a new person from deep within.

That wickedly bewitched persona was glittering with self-esteem, independence and a wildly free mind that lacked ability to care about consequence.

This carefree, infectious character whom I named “Kat” would twirl her little finger around whatever her heart desired and lasso it right into where she wanted it, bullseye every time.

Kat was an outcast to sober, naïve, over-loving, too-worried, wired-out-of-her-mind-in-anxiety, me. Nothing she did was ever within my conscious ability to accept or rationalize.

That was her power, her seducing strength over me and how she won me with each wrestle we fought, how she always left me, overturned, begging for mercy.

Kat fed off of alcohol, off the promise of a sensual prowess, of an expanded playground, heightened adventures. She loathed me, she saw me as weak and innocent and mostly, foolish. Maybe I was.

Kat could pick you up in a second, wrap you up and wring you out like it was nothing, then spit you out. She tried to devour me with her charm, her allure, her sexuality but my fears were much deeper than her, they coursed through my veins harder than her and spoke to me louder than her. The only way she was ever able to overtake me was when she was lushly fueling herself off of liquor. Overdosing off her inability to show restraints.

Make no mistake, the voices I spoke of at the beginning of this belong to me, not Kat.

Kat has an unwavering confidence and she couldn’t care less what anyone thinks about her or her choices. She has a blatant disregard for shame, guilt or regret.

She leaves me with all of those emotions to process. When she’s asleep, biding her time and leaving me to deal with her disastrous pollution of my life.

Kat was forged from a bullet hole I suffered in my chest, one that was shot straight into my heart by my first love. A man who broke me down into tiny pieces and left me on the street, begging for the will to carry on.

She was born from pain, hurt, suffering in the most excruciating forms. She is an all-take and no-give person, she’s an unrelenting manic on the course for a stimuli. She’s everything dark and unquenchable in me and she can overthrow me in the blink of an eye when I feed her the poison she craves.

For years I gave into her harrowing cries. She tortured me to unimaginable extents and compelled me to let her loose. She became so insatiably powerful that I could hardly find the strength to wage war on her.

She was consuming me. She was rotting me from my core. I could not hold in her taste for freedom and she eventually dressed herself in my skin, assumed my name and took over my life.

It was years before I could reign in her control and slowly take my will back from under her hold. She was intensely spirited and refused to settle down without a defiant fight. She summoned her most valiant effort and for a long time, her wrath was a compelling sorcery that I had not the strength nor wisdom needed to conquer.

It was in these days, where Kat was challenging me most. After some subdued retaliation, I had managed to cage her for breaks at a time, our battle was equal in desire and she had enough built up inside her to take me over on a whim if she rested long enough and took me by surprise like a thief in the night.

Hardly surprised and yet crippled by the fear of my situation she crept like a waiting spider into my thoughts. Motivated by the perfect environment to thrive in, Kat was released in full steam.

With Kat on the loose, the game in her court, odds stacked in her favour... who was going to save me… save me from myself?