Work In Progress

There is a particular burden in knowing where one stands in the world. To understand one's own inferiority to a certain population. That you are not the best, nor will you ever be so gifted, simply based on birth rite or clumsiness. I was never a part of that percentage, never one of the particularly gifted or outstanding. And it is a true grievance to the mind and body that one should work so hard, for years at a time, devoting his everything to the development of a skill that would otherwise prove to be useless in the grand scheme of things.

Pessimism has never quite been the sunniest side of the emotional inhabitants of my being. I am not the sullen soul, however, not the type to stray from a challenge or be easily intimidated. We are given one life, one chance. Why waste that precious time hiding with one's tail between his legs? But I had broken beneath the weight of his gaze, the ease of his sly smirk, canines peaking out at me in the low light of his family home. And the way he leered at me struck fear into the greatest depths of my bravery, shook me to the core and left me oddly wanted so much more.

And to know, all at the same time, that he had given that same gaze a thousand and one times, only made the insult all the more deeply inflicting. Fore I was just like the other women he had tamed and broken in the course of a night. Only there was no night involved, no activity beyond his harsh words. And the silence to follow, that genteel smile and self-assured comfort only brought about more of my determination.

Yet he was the one who kept coming back, continued to make the situation all the more complex. And while I feared that I was the marionette, forced to the ground on command to obey this reluctant master, there was a clear irony to his interest in me. Fore he denied my existence with the same zealous confidence that he used to attack me with. He came and went as he pleased, but lingered of will, just to watch or add in a word where he could. But to deny me of everything I desired, knowing full well that I would accept this sudo-defeat every single time he came calling; it amounted to nothing more than a deeper grave, a stronger hold.

Perhaps my independence of him, my will to work and thrive without the slightest want of his attention is what triggered the clashing of figurative artillery. This self-absorbed arrogance he so proudly dawned had to have some kind of on/off switch, had to end at some point of humility, some point of humanity. Maybe that was why he faltered, falling victim to a posed altruism that he could not identify. And the moment that his words, his actions boiled over in my eyes, he found that the only marionette in the picture was his own joints and jabs.

His words may have left me weak, but it was his own curiosity that left him mine.

Dropping your bombs now
On all we've built
How does it feel now to watch it burn
Raise your weapon
Raise your weapons
One word and it's over