Note to self: leave it up.
Patience.
I've never considered myself a patient man, though in practice I suppose I've become one out of necessity. Playing the long game seems to hold greater reward. I don't like it by any measure whatsoever, but it is a necessity as said. I don't build up my hopes as time passes, which seems unusual. My hopes remain the same, set in a point of stasis, and I simply wait.
Yes. I have grown very good at waiting.
Holding up the masks required to make me appear not just human, but competently and likeably human, puts far more strain on me than can be borne without end. To consider myself acceptable for human interaction, I must be friendly. I must be clever and charming. I must be approachable and considerate. The nicest monster you'll ever meet. When I succeed in this, I feel I have done my job adequately. But I do not have the energy for it for too long.
I spend my time alone at home, which does some small good in granting me rest. It gives me time to vent the pressure a while. What it doesn't do, however, alone in my little house, is release the inevitable tension that simply living creates in me. The longer I merely exist, the tighter it turns. It drives me mad, sends me howling into the darkness at night to scream my bestial rage and sorrow at the sky that doesn't care for my small, insignificant torment. After all, the pinpricks of light are from millenia-dead stars, and a star, alive or not, cares for nothing. In my claustrophobic fury, I might drive myself until my muscles burn, just to stop their incessant nervous twitching. The flesh of an upper arm might become dented from fitful snapping and nipping, as a means to some short distraction to the endless, hungry, demanding, constricting wanting of it. Their bruises are almost always gone by morning.
It is a categorical insanity, a tide that has forgotten how to ebb and merely rises. I know how to make it stop, of course, because that's all my mind screams for by now. Some days, beyond even that for food, or sleep.
And I, alone in my little house, can do nothing. Because I can't do it on my own-- I should know, I've tried often enough and to my boundless frustration. By myself, there is only brief sedation. It has been so very, very long that I can barely remember who it was that helped me last time. Years ago, now, and not much at all like how it is now.
This is something new, more or less. I must remember the old adage, that that which yields is not always weak. What that means if your weakness is your hunger to yield, I'm not sure precisely. If existing as myself requires nought moreso than strength, than endurance, then how can I admit what I so clearly desire? Although, when put like that, I don't suppose it's much surprise at all.
But of course, it isn't simple, because nothing is simple. Because of course, it just has to be only one person who I could ever allow this, allow to have this one closely-guarded piece of myself. Ignoring grammar there for the sake of things. Because of course I couldn't ever make it easier on myself, I had to be discriminating. I had to be particular in how I chose to end my starvation. I had to be loyal, and in that I have likely doomed myself, perhaps forever. Because I don't see this ending.
Cut me, it says. Bite me, before I turn and bite you instead. But even that seems like bravado. I don't think it would be possible for me to...
No. I would just disappear into the night again. Rage and howl where no one would hear me, or where no one would care. Go back to my little house, and wait.
Because I have grown very good at waiting.