Messages in a Bottle

[fishfry]

Another letter, abandoned, ink-flecked to the waves.

Dear Stranger,

I find again that I have no one else to write to. Maybe you can forgive me for writing to you again. It helps to get things written down on paper. They don't make sense in my head sometimes. Or worse--they make more sense than I would like. A dangerous sort of sense.

I was cursed, apparently. It was changing the way I thought. I hadn't noticed it at all. Sometimes I wonder how much of what others saw as a 'curse' was just me? How much is the awfulness that I never knew was inside of me? It chokes me sometimes. Chokes me that I don't know. That there's no way to know.

The curse is cut off now. I can't hear the whispers anymore. But it's like lacking them, I do it to myself. Now it's just my thoughts tempting me with terrible things. I'm doing the right thing--I know I am. There's no other option, no other way forward.

Other choices are just tempting shortcuts. But oh, how -tempting- they are sometimes. The easy choice. The shortcut. How much have I changed, that I would have never thought that I would be tempted by it. But that was before I knew what temptation tasted like. Before I felt this way.

You know, Stranger, I feel like I can confess this to you, at least, if no one else. Things used to affect me so much more. I thought I knew what happiness was like, I thought I knew was sadness was like. Anger, fear--all of these, I thought I had felt. But now? Now I've come to realize that everything that I thought I knew was a paltry echo of what it could be.

I've felt delirium now. I've felt despair. I've felt rage. Terror.

I've felt so much, so strongly, that it felt like everything else was swept away by it, even myself. So deeply and so wholly that I am certain that my spirit, perhaps even my soul has been stained by it.

For a long time I fought it. Or tried to. I held back. Duty was a comfortable collar. Obligation was an unkind reminder. That I needed to be strong. I needed to be a good example. That I needed to be restrained always.

So much that I choked on it. That it lived behind my teeth, aching with the need to strike out. But somehow now it's gotten twisted up.

And now that I've let go once, I don't know how to put the chains back on. I'm not sure that I -want- to. It feels good, to be selfish for once. It feels good to let something other than duty rule me.

Ruin me.

Now that I've felt the worst parts of me come alive, can the best parts of me stay true?

I'm still asking you questions you can't answer.

Not yours, and you aren't mine,