Scarred

Dunkel: "I, uh...tried to drink your grape juice carton...but it wasn't juice...it was a camera."

Look downward, cover eyes with hand, groan.

On something completely unrelated, I don't normally remember my dreams when I sleep in my own home. Frighteningly, after spending a few days at a friend's house, it was revealed to me via nightmare that one of my female friends isn't entirely female and furthermore has a liking for the elderly.

It's possible that I'm scarred for life.

My little garden got cold-shocked in transit, followed by heat-flashed. Judging by the fact that the cardboard containers almost instantly rotted and all of the peppers were swept by mold, I thought they'd all be dead and quit watering them. Two days later, the real holly calla (not the grass and clovers I'd been documenting thus far) shot out like a tiny skyscraper, and number one launched out like a devil was chasing it from the ground.

What I'd set out to write far more fancifully than the present mood will allow was a small self-observation with several large and varying consequences. Bypassing all the eloquent and stereotypical talk about the masks we wear, what I realized was that my masquerade was not a standard self-protecting one. The purpose of mine, like most, isn't to hide the self, but to replace it.

What I continually do isn't cover up my anger with sparkling eyes. I show nothing but the kindness to people until that portion of the demon soul is killed and replaced by the kindness. The result isn't an intended kindness, but one as pure as any human can make in its empathy.

I show love, but my love is a murderer that has cut the throat of my hatred and become drunk off its blood.

What I realized was that in the end, it isn't a mask killing a demon, it's the demon killing me.

I am the anger, the lust and the hatred. The compassion, restraint and love are the soul that suffocate my true nature. The demon soul is killing me, not the other way around.

When I realized that I had plateaued into an emotionless, unfeeling state, I thought that I was losing my human side. When I started to gain the kindness toward one's fellow humans that I'd always heard was the ultimate goal of the good man, I thought I had begun to win. All too late, I realize that I really have been losing all this time. It's what's driven me mad for so long. I'm dying and have been for a long, long time. Those primal twitches, that oil that courses through my veins, they may not be what humanity wants, but they are no mask.

They are my purity.

I've fought for sanity so long. To achieve it, I must embrace my purity or the haloed demon that is erasing me.

I will be strong again.

This time, for me.