Mustelae cerebri

A rare small mid-week post since an unexpected blight (~3 day headache!) mucked with my original plans.

After a post from the_siobhan about a month ago I started idly collecting varieties of "brain weasels".

The ones that immediately came to mind were this lot (who wind up sort of collected themselves within the comic).

I was recently telling a friend that I don't seem to have brain weasel*s* or demon*s* ... what I imagine I have instead is this one tiny little me inside my own head holding a crossbow. They're sitting cross-legged, surrounded by bolts with perfectly devastating words carved into their sides, which they keep trained on me at all times and every once in a while let fly. The tiny me looks like late teenage me and is wearing black leggings, a fairly plain long-sleeved black shirt and a glare. I have no idea why I have this image but there it is. What I say about tiny me is that tiny me "says" things to me about me that I would never in a million years Just Say to anyone else about them because there's no goodness in at all (just a missile intended to maim); I've found that it helps to remember that I wouldn't say the things "she says" to others.

The last set get called Monsters. Again, I'm interested in that there's this plurality here as well. I'm struck by the 2nd stanza of this song for pretty clear monster dialogue and also by the theme of not growing up (twisted about since my "monster" is younger than me in my head) and of seeing the monster as some variety of self/unself [he/she/they... above I call "tiny self" both "she" but, interestingly, more frequently "they" which I'm sure is more about gender neutrality in self-representation than weasel plurality]) but I think the scariest monster in it is probably the last one:

I know I'm older, but there are still monsters in all of my closets
Sometimes I feed them and some, they get bigger than others
Depends on the day
Sometimes I'll sit on the edge of my bed
And I'll wait just to see them rear their ugly heads
Sometimes I just cannot face them

I know I'm taller, but there are still things that are out of my reach
One of my monsters, you ask him, they'll tell you
He's always reminding me
I'll never get loved just as much as I give it
My life will be hard for as long as I live it
You ask and they'll tell you it all

Maybe if I sit and reason with them
Tell them they've got it all wrong
Maybe if I sit and reason with them
And tell them they've got it all wrong

I should be wiser, but all of these monsters
I let them get under my skin
One of them has the most hideous face
And he says that I look just like him
One of them, she's so intelligent
She won't acknowledge what I have to say
And she'll tell you she knows it all

* * *

I'll probably keep idly looking for representations of these monsters in the world... to keep trying to pin them down in all their varieties like butterflies.