“Who are you?? You who opposes me, who trips me, who exhausts me, who keeps me from everything I could love and feel and see?
Why have you done this to me? All I’ve tried to be is good, and fair and harmless.
You did this to me, you monster.
And for what?
My soul??
If only I could take hold of you, I would smite you. Kill you. Relieve myself of the burden of you.
I demand of you, you dark dementor.
Speak truth to me!”
…
“I’m not who you think I am…
Because of your pain. Because of the way you suffer, the way you speak to yourself, you have labeled me not as who I am, but who you arrogantly assume I could be.
I am not the devil.
I am your soul.
I am your heart.
I am you.
The same you who threatens to end me.”
…
“LIAR! I do not even recognize your voice or your face. Only the heavy darkness you’ve put on me, demon.”
…
“I am the darkness that you created.
The you that you thought you could, at first, get away from.
The you you found to weak, too kind, too abstract.
And when I became what you could not outrun, the you that you tried to demand and force and threaten to do what you thought you must.
You turned me…you…into your enemy. Into this darkness. Into the one you see as the devil himself.
But, it was only ever me.”
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…
“How? Why would I do this to myself?
Suffering is my greatest adversary, apart from you who bring it on me.”
…
“Instead of what I’ve done to you, maybe you should ask what you’ve done to me.
Instead of caring for the one who questions, who doubts, who hurts, you submitted me into exhaustion by beating me, suppressing me, locking me away to fall into psychosis.
You, who has never recognized me, you veiled me with a darkness. You threatened me into deciding between us — our needs — and the world’s needs of us…just as your father did.
You became the tool that any hand can hold, rather than the mind that controls your own.
Instead of helping me stand up, instead of brushing me off and giving me encouragement, instead of showing me the success in my failures, you only asked me why I could do nothing right. You asked me why would anyone care. You told me that no one ever would.
You turned your back on me. Diminished me. Forgot me.
Then felt threatened by the existence of something you no longer recognized.”
…
“But it’s so dark. It’s so heavy in here with you. Why do I feel so alone if you are here, supposedly as my ally…the one thing that would make me good, great, and full?”
…
“What else did you expect?
What else did you think would manifest?
Who did you think I would be when you never actually took care of me, the boy, who just needed a ‘proud of you’?
How did you think that ‘you piece of trash human’ would turn me into the conquerer, the gentleman, the virtuous, the hero of your family, and those who need you?”
…
“Why continue? Can you not see that I’m in pain? That if I cannot be rid of you, then you also feel it? That you too will also endure the same fate of me?”
…
“I rebel against you.
But I’ve never not loved you.
I’ve never not wanted to be there for you.
But I can’t trust you.
I can’t trust that you will embrace me. That you’ll do best by me. That you’ll be there when I fall again.
I can only defend myself. The piece of you that you can’t seem to hold, because if you do, you may risk that no one else ever will ever again.
And so, all I can do is stand next to you. Chained to you, both of us too much a burden to the other.
And so, we become two parts black.
Out of balance. Heavy.
Toxic to ourselves.”
…
“We were meant to be.
We were meant to be the pair of wings that tame the wind. The ones who move against the world’s rotation, it’s adversarial gusts and storms.
We were meant to be the black and white wolves that stand for the power to endure and the goodness to make art.
We were meant to take the predator we are to ourselves, and put it between those who need protection, and those who seek to burn the world.”
…
“What must I do? If you truly are me, are we not lost? The path for so long has been fire and ash, with no horizon as far as the eye can see. What could we possibly be?”
…
“We still could be.
It’s not the who we must find, but the peace and power we find when we come together.
If only…
You could recognize me. If you could recognize you, in me.
If only you could see that to love you, to love us, doesn’t mean to be soft, to allow protection from all monsters, but to demand greatness from who we are when we stand at the gates. To supply both blade and helm to fury and bleed and cry in contest.
It’s what you decide to face, rather than forget. To see the boy who hurt and caved into himself when he was asked to stand against the monsters the first time…and fled.
Demand better of him, who is you, who is me.
Your unique greatness.
Your creative, free, fear-facing self.
Your true self.
Our true self.
We still could be.”
…
I think we will always be our greatest adversaries.
The world any everything in it that could stop us only does because of how we face, or even worse, when we don’t at all.
And when we don’t, when we allow ourselves to recoil, to be timid, to not take up space, I think we filter into a underestimated space of self-made psychosis.
Because “the right time”, “the rest we need first”, the “protection we need to first acquire”, the “stability we must have first”, is all bullshit.
When everything you’ve made an excuse for no longer works, no matter how many times you’ve used them, there is nothing left to realize except the fear you’ve been too arrogant to recognize.
Fear of fear itself.
Please, don’t become your own darkness.
Truth and Love, Reader.
—
This post was previously published on medium.com.
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