Your Own Battle

Your Own Battle

When you spend ten years of your childhood being told by the only people you had that you are worthless and useless and nobody gives a damn about you, you start to believe it. And no matter how much time passes, no matter how many people tell you otherwise, there's still going to be one small part of you that always believes it; that can never forget it or make it go away.

You fear that eventually the people who surround you now will see what those others saw, all those years ago. You are afraid that once they do, they will turn on you, and despise you, and eventually they will abandon you.

So you leave, before they can leave you. You push them away with no explanation, and you tell yourself that the hurt that you feel now is nothing to what you would feel if you stayed. After all, it's easier to reject than to be rejected.

You don't walk away. You carry on fighting the good fight - you still try to accomplish the destiny that they want you to achieve, but you do it without them. You learn to use so many dreadful abilities, and you discover emotions that you never knew you had: power, hunger and hate. You are terrified by what you learn about yourself, but you won't let them see those things. Won't let them realise who you are, and won't let them be as scared of you as you are of yourself. Because if they knew, they would be terrified. They would see the real you and they would fear you. And they would leave you.

So you build a wall around yourself, strong and impenetrable. You refuse to let anyone in, even those who care about you the most. If they saw you like this, and watched the dark thoughts swallowing you up, they would find that maybe they didn't care about you after all. And you don't think you could bear that. It is better to have them resent you for pushing them away than have them hate you for who you have become.

Because you're not the same person that you were back then. You find it hard to believe that you were once so innocent and noble, that you once had no other thought in your head than protecting your friends by throwing yourself recklessly into the path of danger. But now things have changed. You still try to protect your friends, but in a different way. By pushing them away to keep them safe, even though they don't understand that. Now you have other, darker thoughts; thoughts that your eleven-year-old self would never have entertained the notion of having. You plot and spy. You watch people as they are tortured and broken. When they are murdered. You allow murder in the cause of light, and you wonder if it is truly justified.

Yes, they killed people too, people that you knew. But should you really have sunk to their level? Surely, by becoming their equal, you have let them win.

But that's not true, you tell yourself. If they had won, I would be dead. I would have watched everything precious around me burn, and I would be burnt myself.

Then you realise: there's more than one way of winning. Maybe you will not let them win the War, but they have already won the desperate battle going on inside your mind.

You are cold and bitter. You have given up any chance of love or friendship or belonging. Maybe none of the rest counts, maybe the real battle is inside your mind, releasing your darkest impulses and controlling your terrible actions.

You have no doubts as to who will win that battle. You are already dead, in every way that matters.

But that is not the battle that they see, that they count. They still look to you and follow you. So you check your wall and your smile are still standing, and you fight their battle. You can't remember what that battle is being fought for, when both sides seem so alike, but you fight it anyway.

It's not your battle. Your battle is already lost.