I’ve been thinking about what a job that is, the keeper of the man who makes the shadows. Like being leashed to a panther, both responsible for and a victim of its constant violence.

Being a reason for prejudice and hate, your name invoked in massive destruction, your words turned to garbage. Being a gentle joke to those who know you truly, the puppy whose bark carries the sweetest bite.

Imagine trying to wrap your mind around having conversations and therapy with one of the oldest souls in the world.

Having him whisper desperately to you, things that feel like they must be hallucinations but have weight in your soul. Words that melt into a language you don’t speak, but can feel.

The longest love of your whole entire existence, maybe of anyone’s existence ever, someone you still aren’t even sure you deserve to speak to, and suddenly his behavior is so out of control, so reckless and desperate that it scares you.

Describing his actions to new/old friends, ones who know him in a more real way than you do now, and their energy is like the squealing of preteen girls at a slumber party.

“You don’t understand,” they say. “He never behaves this way.”

And you feel both honored and ashamed. You can make a man of great honor act indecently. What does that make you?

Imagine this man- love of your eternity- later staring at you with disgust and disdain, furious.

You’re a whore, he says.

That smug, haughty fucking face you’ve grown to hate not just in this life, but for all of time.

I feel so sure that who I am is an act of violence against anyone foolish enough to love me. It is like loving a maelstrom.

All will drown.

There’s nothing left in here, I don’t think. I think this year has stripped all the humanity from my bones. I am raw and ferocious.

You don’t understand how many times I have been a villain. You don’t know what I’ve done to survive. You’d be horrified to learn what I’ve done for fun in other lives. You might be shocked to know the things I’ve done in this life alone.

I sit at the very center of the balance. No one ever knows where I will fall or what I might do when I am asked to make a decision. This lifetime has exposed layers and layers of deceits and subplots that I’ve been running for entirely too long now.

Decades. Maybe centuries, given how angry some people are.

And I am unrepentant. Glitter-eyed, with the tip of my tongue at the corner of my diamond hard lips.

oops.

I am a bitch and an unreachable ice queen in this life, someone who cannot be pierced. Someone people are too afraid to love. I radiate energy like a fucking blast furnace.

Across the sea of existence, I am the one who changes the weights on the scale to shift things at her own whim. I should be impartial, but I am always tempted by trouble.

I do so love a drama.

Do not be fooled- neither true light nor true darkness have clear or untainted motives. Both sides will do whatever they can to win. And if I had arms, they would be severed at the shoulder from how often I am pulled back and forth.

I thought I could cure a demon. One of the most powerful forces of evil in the Universe. Someone who continues to rape and murder me in life after life after life.

I secretly gave him every single part of my soul just to prove that he would ruin it. I cannot fathom what a cold, hard spirit I have if I was willing to sacrifice my entire self in order to make a point.

It is funny to know that one of the biggest reasons you can’t kill yourself is because of how much trouble you will be in once you’re dead.

I’m not held to the same standard as others. Everyone is always disappointed in me. Everyone always thinks I could have been better. Even in this life, people have said over and over, “I just expected more from you. I thought you were better than that.”

I’m not sure there is anything of worth inside this wreckage. I think all I can ever be is a nomad, a recluse, a pariah. My eternal curse is to never truly belong. I did it to myself.

I am an example to everyone else of what happens when you are defiant with The Ones Who Weave the Tapestry.

I thought I got to weave, too. …oh no ma’am. No, ma’am.

You get to chase the children holding scissors. You get to pretend you don’t have a pair in your back pocket.

Everyone knows my name, but no one dares to speak it out loud. No one would claim it. People are envious and pitying all at once. You can love the story and dislike the main character. That’s who I am.

Imagine what it is to know you can never really go Home. There is no Home for you. To spend decades working on your soul to know that you are damned.

I am the one who no one sees, forever tied to the one who is always seen, and the one you hope you never see.

The void is all I am and all I love.

It’s all that will ever love me back.