Her Demons

Her Demons

Written by Tammy Varner Hornbeck

Her demons have been with her so long, she can’t remember a time when it was just her thoughts in her head. Her dreams. They came to her in the dark of the night, in her sleep. Not dreams. Night terrors. They stole her peace. They kept her from truly resting, and they were relentless and unforgiving. She has had them from the time she was a young girl and they have only found more pain and fear over the years to keep feeding on her soul. There’s never been enough sunlight to chase them away permanently.

Her first night terror came when she was living with her mother at the age of five. She was surrounded by darkness, walking on an invisible floor. Only a variation of the shadows to lead her to where she needed to go. She is walking in the darkness, all alone. She is trembling with fear and she comes upon a commercial dryer and she stops to watch it spin. Light is flickering on the medal of the door, but she has no idea where the light is coming from. She watches it spin, in a near trance and doesn’t hear the person sneaking up behind her. Someone grabs her and throws her in the dryer and shuts her inside. It begins to spin the hot metal of the drum burns her skin. She beats on the door, but it won’t open. She sees a shadow walking away, her screams unheard or ignored. She is wakened by her own screams, covered in a cool sweat that contradicted the heat of the dream.

The next night terror joined this one when she was thirteen years old. She laid in her bed, awake. The sounds of the house had faded, and everyone had turned in for the night. She clutched her covers up to her chin, her ears straining to hear each and every sound. Her eyes searching the darkness to see the objects in her room, familiar things to calm her racing heart. She drifts off to sleep and her fears overtake her. He is here. She hears the clicking of the doorknob. She tenses, shutting her eyes tighter hoping he will go away. Praying he changes his mind. He doesn’t. She feels his hand on hers, pulling back the covers…and she screams!

Night terror number three is born seven short years later. She is married to an angry man and has a son. She is trapped. No family, no friends. No way out. The only fear greater than staying with him is the fear of losing her child, of him never knowing her and knowing how much she loves him. No job, no car, no money…no hope. Every time she closes her eyes, he is there. Angry, shouting, cussing, hitting her everywhere. Every mean, degrading insult plays in her mind like a broken record. Every punch delivered in the daylight is relived in the darkness. Black-eyes and bruises that never get a chance to fade. Years pass and another child, a daughter comes along, and she is trapped even more. Her chains growing thicker, unbreakable.

The realization that her son would grow up to believe it was right to hit women and her daughter would grow up believing men were supposed to hit her gave her the strength to seek help. It would take another two years, and divine intervention, for her to make it happen. Today she is safe, but the demons keep the night terrors alive. Triggers cause them to resurface. She’s trained herself not to scream. They have lost some of their power, but they still come. They can’t shake her newfound faith on their own; so, they team up together. The nights that they join forces and attack shake her faith’s foundation and she is lost in the past for days.

No one understands. Men have come and gone, chased away by her baggage. One or two cared and loved her anyways…for a time. People of faith offer well-meaning advice, but they want nothing to do with the darkness that comes with being her friend. They say she is holding onto the past and it keeps God at a distance, preventing her blessings. They don’t know that they make her cling to God even tighter, in her own way. She prays more. She seeks him out more. She never forgets that he delivered her from that life and gave her a new one. Her demons are “the thorn in her side”; they have a purpose. The push her. They ignite the fight in her. They drive the emotions she was too afraid to embrace when they first came and she uses that drive to keep going, to keep fighting, to keep trying.

She is forty-nine years old now. She’s been married twice. Her children are raised, and she has grandchildren. She shares her life with a man who has demons of his own, someone who truly understands. The night terrors still come. They never come one by one, always together—where they are the most powerful. She’s given up on them ever going away regardless of how good life is now. She accepts them for what they are, a part of her life. Good and evil. Light and darkness. Joy and sorrow. Without her demons the sunlight would lose its beauty and its warmth would fade. Without her demons she would have no idea who she was, why she was here, and what she was supposed to be moving forward to. They are the wind in her back pushing her to the good things God has for her. She doesn’t welcome them, but she doesn’t fight them in the same way she used to, burying them only for them to rise up and cause more damage than they would if she had faced them head-on. Her, God, her demons. Two sides of the coin, two necessary parts of one heart, one soul, one life.