Phantom Mourning

The last vestige of sanity breaks and a world is created around this broken monument; like a child's broken toy, simple and cherished and discarded. Was I ever a child? Was I ever anything?

I feel like a shadow, a mere remnant of something tangible, like through the deaths of my life a part of me, the part which would make me real, was stripped away, leaving a phantom. And this phantom looked real enough and felt real enough, but wasn't real enough, and he--I--didn't even know it until he--I- met real people. But by then, they were happy with their phantom. A happy, little phantom. Except, the phantom wasn't happy, because happy people don't leave ghosts.

So, this phantom, this ghost of a person, wanders around with smiles and thoughts and reactions, trying to be happy, because happy people don't have ghosts and maybe if he's happy he'll finally be at peace, but there is no peace and there is no happiness and this phantom--this unhappy, little phantom--refuses to acknowledge that until it's driving him insane. And then he finds it funny, because he didn't know phantoms could go insane.

Still, the people, who think this person who isn't a person is real, are happy with their unhappy, half-sane little phantom because they don't see it. They don't see him. They just see the body he inhabits and the emotions that he plays and the reactions that he gives, that, after four years, are so, so easy to fake because I know them inside out. I know exactly how I will react to them, and, more importantly, how they think I will react to them, and it's so, so simple, because after four years, the boy has a pattern. The boy has a pattern and the phantom has a plan and I...I have...I have...

So, yes, there's this boy with a pattern, a predetermined pattern, because he's so like his father you know. The father he's never met. The father who died. The father who people refuse to talk about except to say 'You're so like your father' to the boy. That doesn't help anything, of course, because he never knew his father, so, to him, his father is like him, he is not like his father. That might be lies anyway, you know--of course, you know--because as the boy knows, no one really sees him, they just see his hair and eyes and face, and that he looks like his father. So, maybe since he looks like his father they think he is like his father. Maybe that's easier, because then they aren't worried about him being himself. Then they won't hate the self that he is. Maybe it's easier, but he doesn't want it.

He's--I've--I've decided that nothing is easy and while it's all fun and games and delusional to walk about in a happy little world where nothing is wrong and everything will be okay and only the men in dark masks are evil and they sulk around in shadows so, if you avoid the shadows, you'll be fine, I can't stand it anymore. I don't want to stand it anymore. Nothing has ever been easy for me. Nothing. And so why should it be easy for them? Why the hell should they have it easy and be able to delude themselves and be able to believe that everything will be alright? Where do they get the right to think that I should be all right? That I should be fine and brave and kind and sweet. That I shouldn't have any lasting psychological effects because they're my friends and they love me and, as we all know, loves conquers all.

Love doesn't conquer this. Love hasn't conquered me. Maybe they don't love me *enough* then. Maybe I don't love *them* enough. Maybe I don't love anything at all. After all, love conquers all and I can't even conquer myself. I find I don't want to conquer myself. I wonder what they would say to that. I wonder if they would be disgusted or disappointed or disheartened. I wonder if they would fear me. Their malevolent, little phantom. This malevolent, little feeling. I wonder why this thought doesn't bother me half as much as it use to. I wonder when the change occurred. I wonder *if* a change occurred at all, or if I was always like this, if I was always...so...me.

I don't think I was, because now that I am I'm falling to pieces. Little pieces of truth and beauty and power, like a stained glass window shattering, and they should careful because they're going to cut themselves on the shards and sharp edges. They're going to bleed precious blood over pieces of me and I will soak it up, be stained with it, absorb it, be better--worse--different--for it. I will bleed them and they will cry for it, if I fall apart.

If I take back those lost bits of me, torn away by tragedy, and rebuild myself--stronger, smarter, stranger--than before, I will become...something, myself. I will become found but they will not like what they find. I wonder if that will make them fear me. I wonder if that will make them hate me. I wonder if maybe it is worth that. I think it might be. I think it might have to be. I think that I don't have a choice; that something in me wants this, craves this, demands this. Demands that I break so that I don't have to bend anymore. Neither glass filling nor steel frames were meant to be bent at dangerous angles, into unrecognizable shapes. It'd be cliché to wish for unbreakable charms on the soul. I'm already sick to death of living the cliché.

So, I will shatter, be broken, and I will be rebuild myself until I am no longer recognizable, no longer like glass, which even stained can be see-through. I will be. There will be the last vestige of truth created and a world lived through that, a monument of undone insanity, woven with power. I will become what I am meant to be, because I can not be anything else.