Mixpov

Like every April, I began a deep cleaning of my house, and it was my closet’s turn. It was a large space, filled to the top with things I had stored for a long time and still couldn’t let go of. Among so many things, I found a demon: my demon. For a moment, we both stared at each other. Both of us were scared. Neither he nor I felt comfortable with the encounter; the surprise didn’t sit well with us. After a great awkward moment, he spoke to me. «Hello! How have you been?» he said with an almost soothing voice. «Fine,» I replied dryly.

He was about to say something, but I cut him off. «I thought you were gone, I don’t understand what you’re doing here, we had already made peace.» «Leaving things in your closet is not overcoming them, it’s storing them, which is not the same. Don’t make that face, you know it’s true,» he said without changing his expression.

«What do you want from me?» I asked, with a more irritated tone. «I’ve always wanted you to do what you want, you just have to conjugate the verb ‘to do’ in a sentence and turn it into an action. Do something!» he said. I quickly wiped away the tear rolling down my cheek, as if that would prevent him from realizing that I had started crying.

«Now are you going to blame life for being a cosmic joke? What excuse do you have? Sometimes change hurts, that’s why I’m here piled up with your memories. Coward!» he changed his moderate tone to a sarcastic and hurtful one, and that was his goal in the end, to knock me off balance, and he succeeded.

Fed up and frustrated by the provocation of that being, I began with a fit of anger to pull the boxes and things out of that closet. «Do! Is this what you want me to do? I want you out of my closet, it’s mine!» I yelled as tears blurred my vision.

I ended up with the closet almost empty, half of the things destroyed, everything on the floor, and scattered. With a deep breath, a mixture of relief and exhaustion, I fell to my knees, defeated. I lifted my head, we connected our gazes again, and somehow I felt like we were making peace. I waited a few minutes and stood up. I removed the mirror from the back of the closet, and my demon was gone.