Disclaimer: I take no credit whatsoever for any element of this piece pertaining to Beyblade: including characters, setting, etc, etc… It belongs, and rightfully so, to its creator – Aoki Takao.
You in Me
By Dixon Oriole
If he had been capable of perfect honesty, if, for one shining moment he could have let slip the foolish pretenses, the petty facades, things might have been different.
He would have screamed—a full-throated, frustrated half-sob, half-shriek to describe how he felt, squirming beneath the weight of life, and muscles taut, lips curled into a tooth-clenched sneer, eyes glistening, alight with unadulterated scorn, undiluted rage, he would turn on them and he would say everything he had never been strong or eloquent enough to say.
It would begin with, "FUCK..! I am tired of this! I am sick of the legacy, the goddamn perfection I am incapable of achieving! I am sick of the limitations that prevent me from living up to the expectations I was born into, I was born with, I had beaten into my head from day ONE, precursor to a life of never being good enough, brave enough, calm enough, smart enough! I am TIRED of questioning myself because of these shining examples, these fucking disasters that stumble around in their petty existences, with their ridiculous hopes and their infantile dreams that are accepted, that are raised above all others that are raised above ME—I am disgusted by the very same beloved people that sit upon their pedestals and rainbows and laugh and giggle and eat candy corn and play with bunnies and are protected and adored and I am disgusted that some sick part of me has to question the rest of me the beaten inborn me when I can't be WRONG! I SHOULDN'T BE WRONG! I AM NOT…wrong.
"I am tired of questioning myself, my motivations, MY hopes and dreams—no, my aspirations, my AMBITIONS… I am tired of thinking myself wrong somehow, unfitting, abnormal because I am not protected or adored, because I am not sitting on silver-cloud-linings. I am angry with myself for feeling out of place in a world of rainbows and kittens. I should not feel out of place. I should not feel wrong or disgusting or mean or too-cruel, too-hard, TOO much. Because how can I be too much? I'm not enough. To tell you the truth… I'm not enough. I should not—I should. Should not. Should not be fascinated by things that are, people that remain, lives that will forever be unattainable. Should not feel pressured to act naturally, act normally, fit in—when my natural and my normal are nothing like theirs, nothing like YOURS, and my fitting in has a definition, it isn't, it's not… Should not want to fit in. Should not care that you want me to fit in.
"Should not care that you want me nice docile caring playful friendly smiling eating candy corn in the fucking sky. I am NOT. I will not BE. I should not want to be—I should not even notice. I should be blind to everything. But my purpose. My perfection. My aspirations, my ambitions that have no place in this bunny-coated world. Should not see that I have no place in this bunny-coated, silver-lined world, now and never. I am tired of seeing I am tired of wanting I am tired of looking at you and thinking there MUST be something there I missed. Must be something I missed out on. I was depraved of. Thinking I got the short end of the fucking stick—it shouldn't matter. Does. Shouldn't.
"Thinking there's something beautiful I missed out on… Thinking you're beautiful. And I'm not beautiful. And I'm a mess a messed up too-mean, too-cruel, too-hard… Thinking I'm something not enough. For either of our worlds. To be there with you I would have to deny what I was, what I have been—what, despite your best efforts and my vacant, half-assed promises, I continually am. What I fear, no, what I FEEL I will always be. To be there with you, in your light, in your warmth, a part of your radiance and your exuberance and your—beautiful accepted hopes and dreams in your petty graceful life, I would have to destroy what I have been taught, been told, have known and believed, known and enacted, proven time and time again… I would have to turn a blind eye away from the truth of my hideousness. But however I try, it is the truth. A great resounding clang of collapsing Monastery bells: I should not want this.
"I am tired of straddling two opposing universes. Goddamn psychedelic puppies and furry fluffy candy things with you and warmth and hope and radiance and kindness and belonging and belonging at your side in your arms in your heart—and monochromatic flames licking the empty-boned bird skeletons of wasted moments, wasted breaths, wasted glances and movements and too little too late in a place where nothing is enough but I belong. A place I belong. A place I'm almost perfect for. I can't help but think I'd be perfect there, perfectly at home, if not for you. And your—temptation, your shining example. The gravity that pulls all of us towards you and makes us stare, awe-stricken, at your light. Your dedication. Your courage your heart and soul and I'm pretty sure I don't have a soul. Sometimes I KNOW I don't have a heart.
"I am sick and tired of feeling guilt I should not be able to feel. I am sick of acknowledging your beauty—your beauty in your betterness, in your having something I don't and so being BETTER—because it makes me guilty for not living up to it. For not deserving to even, even stand in your shadow like some goddamn crazy empty thing not a person at all but some monster that crawls out from under a bed or sleeps in the closet with the skeletons. For making mistakes and so not deserving to be near your light. Your superiority.
"I am sick of seeing you and wanting what you have because it means when I hurt you like I invariably hurt you I'm going to care. I'm going to… FEEL something. Guilt. Shame… Hate. If I didn't think you were so beautiful, if I was just blind in all the right places like I'm supposed to be, and I didn't think you had something I needed, something I could use to be a—a, vomitous candy corn person with hopes and dreams, accepted and liked, simply liked in warm arms and affectionate embraces—if I didn't see exactly everything I am not, everything I have failed to be, reflected back in your eyes, I could be perfectly at home in my gray.
"I belong there. The me you want to kill, want to strip away, belongs there. And I just know, I just know if your fingers pry any deeper, it's going to chip apart fall apart and you'll be horrified because you'll realize what I've known all along, what's inborn in me and what I've had beaten into my head from day one: there's nothing underneath. There's no silver lining or rainbows or kittens. There's nothing soft or even smooth or bright-light caring, there's…nothing…like you. There's none of you in me.
"It doesn't matter how far you look or how hard you try to see it, there's nothing underneath this. I have given you everything and come up short. I have seen my reflection in your eyes and it is—incomplete. I don't want you to claw at me anymore because you think there's something better to get at. I don't want you to be disappointed. But really, I don't want me to fall apart anymore. I don't think if you ruined my chances with the empty bird bones and closet skeletons, I could just walk on over to your pretty side and say, 'hey, here I am, I'm ready to be a good guy nice guy everything you've ever wanted me to be. I'm ready to be everything I never ever was and never ever will be now.'
"I don't want you to see just how ugly I am deep down inside, and then underneath that and all around that and everywhere out of every pore on every word, how empty—I'm sorry I fooled you into thinking I had a kind side, a sort of potential, a… I'm sorry you thought, you think, I could ever belong in your arms and your heart. I'm sorry I tricked you into seeing some kind of light. I'm sure it was just yours, reflected. I'm sure I'm pretty much nothing when there's not a bit of your beauty reflected off of my ashen-dead surface.
"I'm sure I shouldn't feel sorry about this. Shouldn't feel guilty about this. Shouldn't feel. I'm sure I shouldn't notice or care that you're prying or feel your nails scraping under the corners of my everything, my truth I offered you but you rejected as lies because it wasn't good enough, wasn't what you wanted out of me… I shouldn't feel you rejecting what I am because I tricked you that there had to be something shining underneath. How did I trick you? When was it? I take it all back.
"I'm sorry you think there's better in me, and you didn't want what I am—you didn't want my cold mean angry volatile pain-in-the-neck hurtful disloyal self… but that's all I am. All there is. I'm sorry you didn't want it, but I can't change, and so I guess you'll never want anything I ever am.
"But what's really the worst thing is that, that you rejected me so definitively, clinging onto your pointless faith, so horribly convinced that one day you'd crack the icy surface and hit a vein of molten gold, that you almost had me convinced too.
"You almost had me rejecting myself, thinking that if I just looked harder, scratched deeper, I'd see a grain of something, a hint of something I'd missed. You almost had me casting about in the dark for a bit of your beauty welling up in me—a bit of my own beauty. You in me. Maybe if I just found something, I could pull hard with your help and find even more. Maybe, maybe I could be different, a different person for a candy cane icing fluff world…
"I stopped looking a long time ago. I stopped casting and crawling and scratching when I hit empty bird bone and realized, to my disgust and disappointment and proved to my cold mean angry real self once and for all, that there's nothing. What you want just isn't in me. And you can't make something out of nothing. Somewhere along the line I lost it, beaten out of me. Or I wasn't even born with it, I missed out, I got the short end of the…"
A/N: Too bad Kai doesn't talk! -gleam- Anyway, why don't you go give your brain a rest? It deserves one, now this thing's over…