(PART 1/2 – Continue the journey here.)
Once upon a time, there was half a boy curious to know what it meant to be whole. He felt wrong — as if a fundamental part of him was missing. When all of his friends cried, he looked with rational amusement. When all his friends loved, he couldn’t see past their immediate reactions. To this boy; empathy can be packaged into neat descriptive words, but never felt. The boy sees people around him who are whole: they could intuitively “feel” what he could not.
This boy was ambitious and wanted to become the leader of his tribe. He knew this was impossible because a leader feels — and he could not. So he devised strategies to compensate. When others sympathized, he would teach himself elaborate muscle memories, tonalities, and dialogue patterns to mirror sorrow. When others needed guidance, he used the same method to inspire them by self-portraying as a character worthy to lead. He impersonated the hero that he needed to be, and he was great at it. He was the playwright, and the world became his stage. He manipulated the act to suit his needs. It became fun.
At the beginning, he would write himself as the protagonist. He was the centre of everyone’s attention and he loved it. But soon, he realized that normal protagonists aren’t like him. Protagonists do not rig the rules and cheat to win. They do not use people for their own benefit. Nor do they “dominate” and eliminate their enemies. The more he thought about it, the more that he realized… he was no protagonist.
He is a villain.
People despise him. He uses his friends, family, and loved ones. He is waste, filth, and should be shunned. Every day, he obtains outwardly success in exchange for gashing inwardly wounds. The pleasures of victory covers the deep down sorrow that he feels from simply being alive. But like all things, these pleasures too are not permanent. So he craves more. More victories, more achievements, more admirations, more, more, and more. He would cry and pray for it to end — because his only drive came from the pain of inadequacy. He is not enough, and no matter what he tries, the pain continues…
And so the play moves on. Two years of agony. Two years of torment. He would wake up every morning dreaming nightmares of his ill deeds. He would sleep every night wishing it would all end.
But the show must go on, he tells himself, and so he continues to act. Deep down, he realizes that he was no protagonist — because the protagonist “feels“, and he does not. He wants to “feel” so badly that it hurts. He is half alive and half dead — because he is only one half of his truest potential. The wounded boy is attached to living — yet wants to die. He wants the cure.
