Narcissus Faced the Ripples

The universe has had to save people from me before. I was, and am still the demon in many stories. How I wish I could change it, how I wish I could talk to them as I am now, how different things would be. Now that I've healed and the fog of my life has begun to lift, now that I've grown in wisdom and compassion, I see the destitution I've brought to peoples' lives and the carnage I've left in my wake. I'd give anything to take all the bullshit back that I put into the world, that I dropped onto their already burdened shoulders. Yet, the stars smiled down upon them and they were saved from me. With any luck, their lives have blossomed far away from the poison I spat on them and they have no reason to ever look back.

You were always enough, it was I who was lacking. I saw your strength and I recoiled from it. I was angry at the world, including myself, for seeing your strength while denying my own. It was easier to make you out to be the villain than it was to look in the mirror.

You see, every time I glanced at my reflection, I couldn't see myself. No, instead I saw the Devil standing behind a dark nothingness where I should have been. I could feel him pressed against my back as his claws traced the outline of all my bones with ripped skin and blood. I was too afraid to face it. I knew what I would see if I looked into its wicked eyes. My whole life, my every waking moment was spent pretending it didn't exist so the world would never see it either. Yet there it stood, glaring at me, tormenting my soul and scorching my heart.

I saw you and I saw an identity, a confidence in yourself that I craved in me. I sucked it into my soul, desperately trying to soothe the burns, hopelessly trying to fill the dark vacuum in the mirror with any semblance of light. I wanted the Devil gone, I tried to drive it out with your light, but my shadow sucked it all away and all the Devil did was sneer its serrated teeth at me and laugh. The world could never know how starved I was, they could never know the Devil had ahold of me or they would see how weak I truly was.

I saw your strength and I knew you could take it. You could shoulder the brunt of my burden. Every time it gripped me harder, every time the claws sunk in, I dug into you. Digging into you felt good, like I was somehow transferring this insurmountable pain onto you. It wasn't because of you. It could have been anyone. It was because of your strength, it was a lighthouse and I was lost in the fiery sea. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone, I was searching for a reprieve from my own misery.

Yet the longer I stayed lost at sea, the more I grew to hate your beacon. Things I once admired in you, I now began to despise because I could not attain them. And why?? Why could I never reach the light?? Why could I not shake this Devil?? Why should you be the light while I'm condemned to this hellish nightmare?? Your light wasn't there to lead me to safety, it was there to taunt me. The light was just beyond my reach and every time I came close to it, the flames would surge as waves crashing on the rocks and I was pulled back out to sea once again.

I hated your strength, I hated your joy, I hated your confidence, I hated everything in you that I didn't see in me. My mind was consumed with hate and everything that came with it. All I needed was your light, I just needed enough of it to fill the void where my reflection should be, then I could cast the Devil out. Yet, no amount of light I drained from you was ever enough. I would suck it all away as soon as I could touch it, then hate you for not letting me have more. You had plenty, you could spare some for me, you could not have possibly known the kind of hell I was enduring in that very moment. You were stingy with your light, you looked down on me for not having any of my own and I hated you for that. God, how I hated you.

The thing is, though. I didn't hate you. I hated me. I hated how weak I was, I hated how afraid I was. I hated how I could never shake this Devil no matter what I did. I feigned perfection in this world so I could ignore my frailty and feebleness within. I realized your light wasn't taunting me, it was doing everything it possibly could to save me. All light can do is shine and illuminate, but it was up to me to See. You knew how much I hated you, yet you kept on shining your light no matter how much of it I stole from you. No matter how much I stole, it was never enough to save me and never enough to break you. How? Why?

I looked around me, above me and below me, searching for an answer and I found it. I was no longer blinded by hate from looking directly into your radiant light. Instead, I was seeing my once desolate prison now a twisting kaleidoscope of the hidden halls of my mind, for the first time since I was a small child, the art of my buried heart was broadcasted for the world to see. Your light had been shining the whole time, imploring me to simply look. You saw Me this whole time and now I finally did, too.

Then I looked straight behind me at the single, long shadow I was casting in the way of your light, the light that was finally so close to being mine, too. In that dark corridor, I came face to face with the Devil for the first time. Its nostrils flared, its eyes blinked with nictitating membranes. I had painful, paralyzing goosebumps all over my body as it once again grabbed my gaze with its necrosed and rotted eyes.

This time, however, I didn't shy away, I didn't cower from the inferno I knew I was about to face. No, this time, with the light of the world as my ally, I stood firm in my right and stared the Devil down. I stood as I felt every assault of shame, every blow of disappointment, every stab of betrayal I had ever endured throughout my life. I stood unwavering as every bone was rebroken and every papercut reopened. I felt every pain again as though it were the first time. It had dwelled and rotted in me for so long that the festering wound was necrosing everything around me by my own hand and I had to relive every awful thing I had ever done. Every atrocious thing that had been done to me was coming for me again. The Devil was trying to use repressed memories to cripple me with shame and guilt, but instead, it reminded me of who and what the fuck I am. I took every wrongdoing I had ever done, every pain I had ever inflicted and I claimed it as mine. It didn't hit me with my past, it threw my past at me and I caught it. It's mine. It made me who I am and who I am is so perfectly imperfect, the Devil cannot touch me. The only reason it ever could is because it grabbed me when I was too young to know better. I let the Devil educate me and now I know better. I know who I am.

I found my light. I AM the light, same as you. WE, together, are a brighter, more powerful beacon than either of us, alone. I no longer need your light, for, at last, I can once again cultivate my own. I am FREE.

In my freedom, I realized something terrible. If I can make my own light, just as you do now....

You must have stared the Devil down, too. You must have felt the agonizing grip of its evil gaze and gone through every hell you've ever endured over and over again, just as I have, all the while carrying the weight of trying to save my raging corpse - a weight that should never have been yours to bear. In my own light, I recognize yours. In knowing myself and claiming it all, I know you. I See You. I love you in all your imperfection as you've stood lovingly by my side until I could accept and love my own. Some of you are still here, but for those of you who moved on before I dragged you down with me, I'm happy for you. I send you the love you should have always received.

This is not an excuse, but an explanation. It was never you. It was always me. I dropped hell on your doorstep because I didn't want to deal with my own chaos. Words cannot describe how sorry I am for what I've done and any and all collateral damage I've caused. I was carrying the Devil on my back, I didn't think anyone could possibly understand, but I can finally look in the mirror now. I see my soul where a shadow once was in every mirror and every drop of water. I see my soul in every molecule of water that binds together to make you, and Friend, I See you. I finally See you.

Go forth in happiness and peace, friends. Know that I wish you the best in life and I send you love to fill any trench I may have dug in your heart. In my search for Home, I've waged war and destruction, laying waste to anything and anyone who could give my outcast heart refuge. For that, I beg forgiveness which I know I'll never receive. Life moves on for you and I pray you find the very happiness I tried to convince you didn't belong to you.

I am /You/ are Me.