#37

I know what fear is.

I know the icy-cold feeling that lurks about your heart throughout the day, even when you’re out in the heat, chatting, sweating and smiling and honestly enjoying yourself, albeit not nearly as much as you normally would be. I know that grip slowly crushing the innermost defenses of your soul. I know how it feels to lay down and feel that feeling in your chest, as if somehow some sort of a slow poison has slipped past through the skin and the bones and the tissues to slowly burn a hole in your chest silently, slowly, piece by piece, yet noticibly enough that you can’t sleep no matter how hard you try. I know the tangible feeling of fear that isn’t there, but is just enough so that you can never chase it too far from your mind. I know what fear is.

I know what fear is because I feel it now. And I don’t like it. I never used to fear, did you know that? On any level. Not for self because, on many levels, I actively wanted to see myself destroyed. Death seemed a good way out. Not for others because I simply didn’t care about them . Not for things because they were transient and replaceable. Not for ideas or ideals because I believed at the time that they were all necessarily false. There was simply nothing that frightened me. Not beatings, not lack of food, not being wrong, not the law, nothing. But I feel it now.

I feel it now and I don’t like it. It’s such a strong feeling that it very nearly makes me wish I turn back on what I am and where I’m going now and return to my hard shell. My insanely strong shell of a personality that never hurt noticibly (not even to me, so strong were my powers of supressing it and then diverting the emotional energy into other emotions, usually anger or hatred), that never feared, that never could be dominated nor controlled. Then I wouldn’t feel enough to fear. Then I wouldn’t feel enough to hurt or be lonely. Then I’d have my old ultimate control of self. Then I’d have once more my skills of manipulation at my disposal. I haven’t used them for quite a long time for moral reasons. Moral reasons? Is that really what it is? Am I really moral? Sometimes I don’t think so. Sometimes I think that in many ways I’m still the cruel, brutal, dominating giant that I used to be. I’d carve my own bloody path through the world like I did before and take what I wanted and no longer needed to stop and worry about things like ‘truth’, like ‘righteousness’, like ‘passion’ and ‘love’. Just pleasureable, in control, all-adapting, full of low-cunning and intuitive understanding.

I hate the prices of feeling again sometimes. Fear is so crippling. Loneliness strikes right to the core. They’re the prices of opening up again. For all the good things, and there are many, sometimes I really just want to turn around and go back. But I feel like I’m almost normal now, almost better now. I smile and mean it, feel it….people realize it, respond to it in ways they didn’t used to respond to me. People catch my back for no reason other than that they like me, not for other manipulated reasons. I feel bad when I know I should, I feel guilty for things of the past, I feel sorrow for the losses incurred, I feel happy for the little gifts and the little pleasures. I feel peace when i sit outside and watch the squirrels and the lizards go about their lives. I feel very much a part of what they’re doing, a piece to the puzzle, a cog in the whole. I’m happy and at peace.

But at the same time the negatives very evenly parody the positives, overall. They don’t happen often, but when they do they easily overpower the good based simply on how powerful the feelings are. I want to just go back…

So strongly that it becomes a judgement call. What do I want more? I can slip into both because now they’re BOTH still natural to me. I’m in very much a transitional period and I’m equally both parts, there is a very strong balance between the two. I can be ice-hearted cold, calculating and intelligent shade that lurks amongst people and simply pushes people in the right directions to get the things he wants while making them think that that’s what THEY want to do. It sounds hollow, and it is in the ‘normal’ sense. It’s also a very very powerful and empowering mindset to be in. To be a lurker…to act just like the others around you yet to feel absolutely nothing… and for no one to notice except those you choose to let know. Hollow, yes, but what does being hollow matter to one who doesn’t feel? It’s effective. Most effective, even. Being able to be cool and calculating even in the most stressful of situations is a very powerful skill, a skill I can’t emulate very well now, I’m learning more and more. Most of my old strengths are gone now that I’m in this new mindset.

The feeling one. The one where I act based on the things I believe in rather than the things i desire. The very warm, empathetic and caring person I’m trying to be and become. The strengths of a net of people who’d go further (I think, at least, so far) to help me than the ones you get when you’re on the other side of the fence. It’s not lonely, I have people like Jacinta in my life. Am I really willing to sacrifice this for a little peace of mind?

Peace of mind and calm and dark serenity; that’s all switching back would bring. But those things are so tempting to me…why is easy to see, too, for me. Peace of mind is simple, most everyone should know about that one. Calm is easy too….I value coherant, crystal-clear thought a great deal. Calm and ONLY calm does that. Calm and peace….that’s what my dark side has. As for serenity, that’s strangly addicting and most likely the strongest pull of all. I want to be pure, I want to so much. I want to be exactly the ideal I have set before me, I want to embody it and to reach it and I’m trying to so much but I always seem to fall short. I always make mistakes and hamper my own progress. I don’t like tripping over my own feet like i’m just learning to walk (and in many ways I am, it’s like i’ve finally caught up to where your average 14-year-old is emotionally from a severely stunted emotional growth…I’m tripping on all the sorts of things because I simply don’t know about them). When I was the way I used to be…I was exactly an ideal. I was the shade, the dark knight. A cruel entity who always was true to self and to the embodiment of an ‘evil’ concept. Perhaps that’s a little strange; most people don’t care too much about what they embody, but I do. Being purely one ideal is always better than being nothing, or multiples of somethings, to me.

Sometimes I really think i should just go back. Ha…I’m even doubting now. I didn’t used to doubt myself either. Feelings suck.