Queen of the Damned

So, it turns out I do know death intimately. She lives in my home and hovers aimlessly over me.

The hovering comes second place, of course, to watching the rest of the world. She sucks energy from every source accessible.

Living with death has taught me her characteristics. She’s not a hard girl to figure out. She’s actually quite simple of a code to crack. Death thrives in the darkness but doesn't do so well alone.

Death thrives in the darkness, but doesn’t do so well alone.

Let’s break that down.

The only way we have definitely concluded that misery loves company is because we’ve tried leaving misery alone. Misery is just another pseudonym for our dear girl, death. Misery is a parasite that does not create--it absorbs and multiplies.

Misery seeks like beings and collects crowds of onlookers who, in turn, relate back to her. Death, like misery, has no friends, only fearful captives. You’re caught in her comforting bosom if you're scared of what tomorrow brings. I learned from the most unlikely of philosophers that “a scared nigga is a dead nigga.”

If you’re scared of death, she owns you.

When you look her in the eye, shoulders square and heart lifted, she tends to mumble under her breath and walk away. Pure light, hope for tomorrow, and joy of life are a deadly cocktail mix for death.

She thrives in darkness but not in isolation.

Death needs believers, observers and admirers to stay relevant. Without the peanut gallery, she flops. When she doesn't have an audience, she’s a complete slob, sitting in a pile of her own trash, playing patty cake with her besties: procrastination, greed, gluttony and envy.

Filth is what’s familiar to death. For her, keeping things clean is a hard task because it’s a foreign concept. Breathing life into other living beings is complicated for an entity that is dead inside. The dead duck their reflection and spend as little time outside as possible. They are a cancer to light-filled spaces and expert liars. Lying and competing are among their sports. Service and sacrifice are at the bottom rung on its focus ladder.

They hate who they can’t dominate. Resent who they can’t recruit. Capture who they can’t control.

Death wears a lot of disguises too. Anything to make you think letting her into your home is a good idea. She’ll be whatever you’re into. She never existed before you learned who she was. You never noticed her before you bumped shoulders with her. But once you did give her a modicum of your attention, and she detected a tiny sense of fear and belief in her power. After that one time, she sank her fangs in and never let up.

Now, that I recognize death as my long term living mate, I can give her all the space she wants to roam and feed. Not off me-- but wherever else she’d live.

The unfortunate thing about death is that she doesn’t quite study her prey hard enough. The loss of control of her hypnosis sends sis on a spiral and she starts to let her tail show in ways she didn’t think possible.

I mentioned death has a lot of disguises but they aren’t good ones. Like at all. They may fool a few people at first… but real always recognizes real.

That’s the number one ground rule that truly governs life on earth. Death is only real to her captives who believe in her. There literally is no proof we are alive or dead right now. If you believe in time, you believe in death.

If you believe in eternity, you know death, but you’re not affiliated with her cult.

Your life exists on another dimension. Separate from the death drones.

You create the “no-fly” zones for the death drones.

Yes, one day we will all die.

Death is a necessary part of life.

How you die is up to you.

You can fearlessly let her in and set her up in the guest room and a spare set of keys.

Or option 2-- you can quietly obsess over her through your fears of her, join her fan club of captives and let the thought of her permeate over your entire existence until you yourself start to die slowly.

The less you fear, the more you’re free!

-Ariel