Godlike/Doglike

How could they see something so worthy in something so painfully normal? All he ever wanted to be was a normal kid. Normal, what a weird word. Everyone viewed those like themselves as normal but perceived themselves to be the freak. Was he normal? He thought he was. He honestly thought of himself as someone bland, contrite, boring, even.

But that didn't stop others from treating him as if he was special. He was Godlike. He could do no wrong. His advice was hailed because it was exactly what everyone needed to do. He was morally unshakable, standing firm to his beliefs even in extreme situations. He was martyr. He never renounced his beliefs.

Arnold was that way because he was expected to be. He couldn't pinpoint when he had become the advice giver, the moral pillar, or the fixer. People expected him to give them advice, they fell to pieces without it. People expected him to stand fast by his morals, so that they themselves could adhere to their own. People expected him to fix them.

How were they to know that sometimes he wanted advice? How were they to know that sometimes, he wished that they had enough backbone to stand up for themselves? How were they to know that maybe he, perhaps, needed someone to fix him?

They couldn't know. They could never know, because he hid it all beneath a half-interested, placid veneer. He could never let them know, because they could not handle themselves without him, like lost little sheep. They had elevated him to a god.

He was doglike. He was a boy, a simple boy who had the same dreams as every other boy. He had carnal desires, he wronged people, and he wanted things to benefit him. His motives were not always selfless, but still read as such.

Arnold found relief from this problem, this plague that dogged him constantly, in one person: Helga. She had cynical eyes and read everyone as someone who was out to get her. No motive was pure in her eyes. She had a vendetta against the world and no qualms about letting the world know. He knew that at least one person saw him for what he was: human.

He knew that she understood humans. Humans were a multi-faceted problem, they were many layered and deep and complex and nothing was every simple. They had problems and were terrible and could hurt. They could destroy another with simple words. They could make someone soar high above the clouds with simple words. They stole and coveted and sinned and cried and lived and were happy. They had families, people who loved them unconditionally, and they had enemies, people who hated them for good or silly reason. They were anything but simple, and they were hardly godlike.

Arnold was anything but good, and it was a strange sort of balm to his troubled mind knowing that he could never fool her.

Arnold, my love, my light, you fill my heart with feelings that no words could ever express. What god loved me enough to grace me with such a perfect angel? You are my salvation, my saviour, my love. Helga dotted the end of the sentence with her pen. She shut her pink book with a snap and looked up, out of her window. The moonlight was beautiful and perfect. The crescent shape of the waxing moon reminded her of Arnold. To her, he shone just like the moon, giving off a light that was beautiful and perfect. Nothing could destroy the shining image of Arnold she had built up in her mind. Nothing could destroy that shining veneer.

–

People are never what they seem.