Enemy or Inner Me: The Call Is Coming from Inside the House

“Every day, I search for an escape from the labyrinth. Every day, the Minotaur hunts me. Running only gives the bull more power. The only way out is inward. I must accept that at the center of the labyrinth, I will not face the Minotaur, but myself. I am the Minotaur. I am hunting myself.”

In Greek mythology, the Minotaur was not born a monster. He was the consequence of a king’s pride and a god’s anger. King Minos of Crete wanted proof that he was chosen. Favored. Ordained. So he prayed to Poseidon for a sign, and from the sea rose a magnificent white bull. The agreement was simple: sacrifice the bull, and the throne is yours.

But Minos wanted both the crown and the beauty. So he kept the bull and offered a lesser one in its place, believing he could deceive a god. Poseidon did not strike Minos down. He did something worse. He unstitched the order. He drove Minos’s wife, Pasiphaë, into a madness that felt like love. A hunger that felt holy. And in her delirium, with the help of the brilliant and morally indifferent Daedalus, she hid inside a hollow wooden cow to mate with the beast her husband refused to surrender.

The Minotaur was born from that collision; half man. Half bull. Too human to be only an animal. Too animal to be fully human. He was not evil by choice. He was shaped by disobedience that was not his own. And because Minos could not kill what his arrogance created, he buried it. He ordered Daedalus to build a labyrinth beneath the palace at Knossos, a maze so intricate that no one who entered could return. It was a containment plan. A way to hide shame beneath stone.

Every year, sacrificial bodies were sent into that maze, boys and girls walking corridors that folded back on themselves, spiraling toward something breathing in the dark.

For a long time, I believed life was like that labyrinth. I saw myself as one of those offerings, abandoned inside a system of twists and shadows, left to fend off enemies I imagined were outside of me, waiting to drain the life from my bones.

So I ran. Every day, I searched for an escape from the labyrinth. Every day, the Minotaur hunts me. But lately, something harder and quieter has settled in my chest. At the center of the labyrinth, I will not meet a beast. I will meet myself.

I am the Minotaur. I am hunting myself.

It is easier to imagine an external enemy. A jealous colleague. A cruel lover. A system that failed me. A childhood wound that still bleeds.

It is harder to admit that sometimes, the one sabotaging my peace, my calling, my future… is me. David writes in Psalm 23, “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.”

For years I imagined that table set across from faces that opposed me; critics, adversaries, and the ones who misunderstood my becoming. But what if the enemy at that table is also the voice inside my head? The one that whispers:“You are not ready.”“You will fail.”“Do not try.” “Stay small.” “Stay safe.” Sometimes I am the enemy God is making a table for.

Sometimes the feast of abundance is laid out in front of me, and I am the one too afraid to sit down.

I talk myself out of the future God had already written. I shrink from opportunities that terrify me. I mistake fear for discernment. I mistake comfort for calling. The mountain I have to climb is not outside of me. The mountain is me. There is a subtle shift that happens when you grow. As a child, danger is obvious. It has teeth. It has a name. It stands outside the house. As an adult, the malignance moves inward.

It becomes doubt. Procrastination. Self-betrayal. Patterns that look like protection but feel like imprisonment. In slasher films like Scream (my favorite), there is always that moment. The phone rings. The protagonist answers casually, maybe even amused. They believe the threat is outside, somewhere in the dark, somewhere at a distance. The voice taunts them from beyond the walls.

Then the realization lands. The call is coming from inside the house. And everything changes. Panic does not come because the enemy appeared. It comes because the illusion of safety collapses. The house was never secure. The threat was already within.

That is what self-awareness feels like.

The moment I realize that the voice undermining me is not my past, not my critics, not my circumstances.

It is my own fear wearing a familiar tone.

It is my own woundedness masquerading as wisdom.

It is my own resistance disguised as prudence.

The Minotaur is not charging at me from the forest.

He is pacing inside the maze of my own mind.

And here is the most uncomfortable truth:

The Minotaur is not purely evil.

He is born of something wounded.

He exists because something in me was not integrated, not healed, not accepted.

The labyrinth was built to hide him.My defenses were built to hide parts of myself I did not know how to love.

But what if the way out is not to slay the Minotaur?

What if the way out is to stand at the center of the maze and stop running?

Running only gives the bull more power.

Avoidance feeds him. Denial strengthens him. Projection enlarges him.

The only way out is inward.

To sit at the table God has prepared, even if the enemy sitting across from me shares my face.

To admit: I have doubted myself. I have delayed obedience. I have chosen comfort over calling. I have spoken curses over a life that was meant to bloom.

And yet the table is still there.

The cup still overflows.

The Shepherd still leads.

Even when I am my own adversary.

The mountain is me.

Not my boss. Not my past. Not my upbringing. Not the economy. Not the betrayal.

Me.

My thought patterns. My inherited fears. My unchallenged narratives. My addiction to certainty. My quiet preference for the familiar cage.

The malignance moved from outside in because I did not realize I was leaving doors unlocked.

But this is not a story about despair.

It is a story about awakening.

Because once I realize the call is coming from inside the house, I stop scanning the darkness outside.

I turn inward.

I search the rooms.

I light the corridors of the labyrinth.

And I discover something almost unbearable:

The Minotaur is afraid too.

He is the part of me that learned survival before it learned trust. He is the child who armored himself in horns and muscle because vulnerability felt lethal. He is the voice that tries to keep me small so I do not risk being shattered.

I am not being hunted by a demon.

I am being chased by an unhealed version of myself.

And if that is true, then the fight changes.

This is not about escape.

This is about integration.

Not about slaying.

About reconciling.

Not about destroying the bull.

But about reclaiming the man inside him.

Every day, I search for an escape from the labyrinth.

Every day, the Minotaur hunts me.

But today, I am learning something new:

The labyrinth was never meant to trap me forever.

It was meant to lead me to the center.

And at the center, I will not find a beast waiting to devour me.

I will find myself.

And perhaps, finally, I will stop running.