The Wyrm

“People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Wave in the Mind

I began calling it the wyrm. Yes, I did spell it that way in my mind. It brings to mind a maleficent dragon, an intelligent creature with its mind bent on control and destruction. The dragons in much of the old fairy tales and legends commanded fear. They took control of castles and mountains and claimed the territory for their own, destroying all who ventured across their boundary lines until a hero could be found to change the story.

This wyrm lived in my mind. It did much the same thing as those creatures of old: it felt intelligent, cruel, fear-inducing, and looked to control a portion of my mind for its own.

A few years ago I was working to end a project that I had spent the better part of a decade on. There is a lot of life in a decade, understatement I know, and the full weight of ending a chapter was crashing down on me. The thing is, we were ending the chapter when all of our metrics were on the uptick.

The podcast was being listened to more than ever. The magazine had hit its stride. The brand felt differentiated from the parent brand — no pun intended — and that is when the wyrm began. 

You are selfish. You are making the wrong choice. You shouldn’t be trusted with this decision. You are putting your needs before others… how could you? This choice will cost you everything.

You see, a part of me knew that the decision to end the project was right. Actually, almost all of me knew it was probably past time. But the voice of the wyrm began to throw doubt on it. It threw doubt on my ability to make good decisions. It threw doubt on my motives. It questions whether or not I was even a good person.

I have encountered this wyrm in different seasons of my life, but all to the same effect. When it comes time to take on really exceptional risks, really big changes, or have demanding conversations, this voice creeps in. Like the dragons of lore, it seems bent on keeping me to the territory — relational, emotional, you name it — that it deemed acceptable.

Often that boundary line was very old. 

If you have this hard conversation people will leave you. If you practice healthy boundaries no one will love you. If you express what you like others will mock you.

Perhaps you have heard the voice as well?

It took me a few weeks to get away from the power of the wyrm that time. What helped was bringing others into the internal dialogue and asking them what they thought. It also helped to pray and to forcibly set the in a “container” for a while. I found that I needed to move my body and exercise a little more during that season.

Most of all, I needed to name that it was not something to simply accept and drift back into the old boundary lines, but something that I needed to be curious about and to learn how to engage if I wanted to step into my next chapter. To ignore or deny the existence of the wyrm would have been to let it continue to eat me from within.