On the Road #7

IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT IDIOT YOU ARE AN IDIOT.
 
How could I be so naïve? This is nothing but my own doing--the consequences of my own actions. I knew I was foolish. They ruined me--and I thanked them. I am aware, yes. I am aware. Catastrophically aware. I am a tool, a means to an end until I am no longer useful.
 
Why did you do this to me?
 
Why does this bring me such agony?
 
I have learned that I am inconsumable. I cannot be swallowed. Merely choked down. Spit out. It seems there is not a single room in this world where I belong—No bother, I will make room. It’s inside myself that I must seek someone who will understand--it’s so difficult. It’s so incredibly difficult.
 
LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR LIAR EVERYONE LIES.
 
I have survived, but I have not been spared. I am the shape they made me. Filth teaches filth. I’m not the person they left behind anymore. I am Lesaoloth Ansiir'th Elgg-hor'ana Dumitrenteau, born under an ill omen. I am not Cicero Liao, the person I hoped to become here on the surface. I am Morwen Dumitrenteau’s reflection. I am Luthien Despana’s monster. I am Lesaoloth Ansiir'th Elgg-hor'ana Dumitrenteau. I am the puppeteer of Cicero Liao. I hate the rain. I am Lesaoloth Ansiir'th Elgg-hor'ana Dumitrenteau, and Vhaeraun favors me.
 
Father, you used to love me, at least I thought you did. I hope you did. “Look at you” you used to say to me with a smile on your face and pride in your voice. Oh, when you used to sing me to sleep..the lullabies my mother was too ashamed to do herself. Did you love me then? When did you stop seeing me as your precious boy and start seeing me as your way to get ahead? “Do not worry little spider the moon cannot reach you here, soothe your mind and I will keep you safe” You always provided me comfort in a place where it was scarce and yet you took and took from me until I barely existed. How much can you take and get away with it, before it’s some sort of murder? How long has your greed festered? What else could you have wanted!?! How dare you? Why was my adoration not enough for you? Why wasn’t I enough for you? My blind devotion to you shattered my body, slicing me open my insides bared to the world. Even now I find it nearly impossible for me to hate you. I’m scared of the love I have for you. Because I fear know it will ruin me.
 
The rare times I find myself in front of a reflective surface I often discover you staring back at me. We exist as mirrors of one another in ways no one else seems to understand. I try to explain, and they tell me you are evil, and I reply “Yes, I know.” Mere hours before I left, you had entered my room sat by my head and whispered, “I love you. My dark child, my love, evil of my evil.” You cooed at me and kissed my hair. It’s almost ridiculous when for the majority of my life you implied the most heinous thing I had done was exist. I wonder if you knew I was awake? It’s then I ask you, mama, my ilhar, my mirror, my mother, evil of your evil, my l'forn, my heart, mother, the despair I feel. Where do I put it? Where, Ilhari? You’ve instilled an anger in me, Identical to your own, drilled it into my soul, placed it in my hands, hid it beneath the soles of my feet, it’s mine now. There is something wrong with you. There is something wrong with you that is also wrong with me. How deep do our similarities run? Where do you stop, and I begin? I could write it hundreds of thousands of ways. It all boils down to this: I loved you and you abandoned me, leaving them to sink their teeth into me and rip me apart like wild dogs. I don’t forgive your failures.
 
Being a person doesn’t come naturally to me the way it seems to for others. There are days I feel so disconnected from myself I wonder if I am really a person at all. I do exist, don’t I? People who are so sure of themselves awe me. I study them and attempt to mimic their ease. I tried to make my own person. Cicero Liao. I wanted to be him as foolish as it sounds. Assimilation is useless, I realize that now. Despite this realization the pathetic situation I find myself in now is one of my own making. Against my better judgement I allowed myself to be vulnerable and now I have paid the price. I feel so inescapably lonely, like childhood again—walking the expanse of my library with my only company being the sound of my own footsteps. No Luthien, no mother, no no-one. I can’t help but think I’m right back where I started 7 years ago. I cannot even escape within my books. I left my beloved Gunslingers Glory with Gaelia in Swordia and Gods only know if she has kept up with it. The others I’ve collected over this journey are useful yes, when it comes figuring out what I am and how it connects to everything, but I feel the more I read the more confused and lost I become. I miss Gaelia more now than ever. I long for the nights we’d spend together, in the field under the stars. She would look into my eyes like she was searching for something, and I wanted her to find it. She didn’t care what l lacked...Or—how broken I was. She saw me, for what I--am, as I am. She was happy to see me. I didn’t know what to call it at the time, what was happening between us, but I liked it. It felt silly, safe, and good. It’s shocking how a person can feel like home. I think if someone got to know me, they could love me like Gaelia does. But if they really, really knew me, perhaps they’d never want to see my face again.
 
The idea of friendship has always been a foreign concept to me, before Gaelia I mean. I wanted to replicate these feelings with Legacy and Anastasia, and I did partially—with Anastasia atleast…I thought I had. They asked me to be their brother during this journey and I was stupidly eager to accept. They said they cared for me. I believed them. And maybe that was more my fault, than it was theirs. I thought maybe it had meant something to them, too. I never imagined they would use my weakness against me---to punish me. They knew what they were doing when they took my gun. They knew it would violate me---they knew I’d feel like an animal backed into a corner without it. All over some wretched insignificant topsider trash. I try over and over again to understand what happened. Betrayal?! That implies I knew your love for me would be conditional--why does some filthy fucking human’s life outweigh my chance for happiness!? Accusing the one person to ever choose me—defend me—that put me first of being evil? Why is making me a priority evil? Why is loving me such a monstrous act? Despite everything I’ve done it still feels like the worst atrocity I’ve committed is wanting to be loved. I mourn my progress—I want to be normal. I just want to be normal.
 
I dread my anger. So I displace it, attaching it to superficial places or people. The real problem I face is what to do with the anger. I have suppressed it for so long that I have packed it like dynamite and with the tiniest spark it threatens to explode. I feel it’s my anger that has helped keep me alive. I have never lived. As far back as I can remember, I have done nothing but endure. Enduring things is what I do best, gritting my teeth and bearing them. I have spent my life holding my hands in tightly hidden fists, biting my tongue keeping quiet and complicit. To try to understand what it would mean now, to hold them open--I have always been ashamed there is nothing more humiliating to me than my own desires. Nothing that makes me hate myself more than being burdensome and anything less than self-sufficient. I am hoping it is enough to be both angry and alive, whatever is burning in me is mine--and I’ll split this world in two and everything in it before I’ll let anyone put it out. If I have anything else I have time--I will play my role to perfection, smile and laugh and play their games. The world is my sava-board, and I intend to win.