Things tend to pan out in ways that are different than you wanted, you would have liked, than what would have pleased you. That’s why you say to yourself, you try to say that it’s all for the best, that you didn’t want it anyway. Maybe you let yourself marinate in seething rage. Maybe it burns you slowly. Maybe it’s a maggot that eats you from inside. Of course it’s all in your head. Of course they aren’t kicking you when you’re down. Of course, you’re not different. You’re just ignored. Which is both a great and a terrible thing.

The act will never end. They will play, and they would like you to play, and to be played. There is nothing else. The well of wishes remains lonely, nobody peers into it, not even to throw a stray coin into it, let alone peering into the dark water and ponder upon its silence.

All apologies are fake.

Sometimes you can’t pinpoint why you hate certain people. It’s because they aren’t easy to vilify at times; perhaps their positivity isn’t directed towards you, it’s always pointed somewhere else, (someone else). In the heart of your heart, you don’t want them to be happy. You want you to be happy. You think about yourself, just like they do. Except, they call you out for doing it so openly. You’ve got to pretend to be nice and to like people, passive aggression being some sort of power move to assert your mental dominance and mental superiority. Maybe it’s an inferiority complex, you’re not the best at anything anymore. “I’m the worst at what I do best” and all that, except I don’t feel blessed at all. Maybe I should embrace my mediocrity and just live with it.

But maybe- I should just live in constant defiance, reclusive and ready for a fight that doesn’t actually exist. It’s easy to be a superhero because the supervillain is just completely evil. Also supervillains tend to be quite obvious and they are written. Written to be defeated. Obvious in their actions. Flawed to the point of weakness. Real evil conceals itself. Hides in plain sight, behind the most beautiful, most kind faces. You cannot defeat it.

I try to keep my guard up, to shield myself from my propensity to be consumed by my emotions. But I know I love it as well. I’m obsessive, I’m perhaps compulsive. The same person as I always was. In a setting that’s not good for my afflictions. People like me should not be left alone, I guess. I’m like a novice vigilante who charges into things and then gets impaled by a hail of bullets arrows and rusty knives. The wounds heal, but the infections linger on inside me. Multiplying, growing more and more powerful.

One day I’ll accost my demons head on. One day I’ll let them take a chunk out of me, and I’ll feel light and empty, ready to be filled with more of the same. And it’ll all happen again. A man in perpetual wait, waiting for his boiling point.