To take a fall and to crash deep into the core was not a failure to him, the boy with a golden cover on his hands, the boy with teeth that spoke every word without using sound. To land on both feet and to stand tall and proud was neither a success to him, the child with body made of leather, the child with a skull made of steel. To take a step and to live the next day was the only success and the only failure; to stand on top and look at the bottom, to see the face of your own mortality waiting patiently for a predetermined date, to know that reason had long since left for another mind was the true victory to him.

And the true defeat, his lack of bravery.

To see Death and to not even flinch was not the strength of man, but the weakness of a fool. To spit in the eye of Satan and insult the dignity of God as so you may live to be a being that transcends both heaven and hell in a single moment was not a miracle, but a misguided faith. To see the laws of the world and to take a pen with ink permanent, and replace it so it is what you make of it, does not make you more than man- it makes you less than the dirt children play on.

To live until it hurts is not to be brave, it is hiding from the truth.

The truth that most every day of his life was a constant stab in his heart, ripping the veins and draining all color, leaving his body cold and still, dripping in the taste of his own blood. The truth that he was the one ripping and tearing at the scabs, the hole growing deeper and the pain growing number.

Self inflicted pain.

It was no lie, he knew very well that was how is life was lived.

To live until it hurt, to take that pain and relish in it. To experience the feeling of it all as if it was more familiar then the taste of cider that was hot and smooth, burning the flesh in a way that tickled more than stung; more familiar then the taste of freshly fallen snow, and the sound it would make as you walk by.

His frustrations were let out in a way not even a man with the most broken of hearts could understand. When they would try, he only made them hate him.

No.

They only made him hate them. They made him hate the way they talked, the way they dressed, the way they put their lemon hair up as if it even mattered.

They made him hate self. The him, he adored, with every part of his soul, with every beat of his heart, but the self was an anathema. A pulsing tumor he wanted to tear out every day, with every movement he made, with every breath he drew to say another thing to appease his own self, his own loathing. Himself was nothing more than a bitter pool of apathy.

But he did not hate himself.

He knew to the fullest extent of what those words meant, and even without a thought, even without knowing, he knew. And that was how he would get out of bed and that was how he would smile, and that was how he would climb up the hill every day and that was how he would get down each night. He knew it, he knew it was all okay. He knew it hurt but he knew why and he knew how and he knew how to alleviate it.

And yet he did not, he did not ease at all. He did not look at the cause and he did not tell it every word that was pounding in his head, he did not take its hand and hold it to his chest, letting it know that every beat was crying out its name. He did not wake up every dawn and smile at himself, knowing that he was okay with this, okay with the fact it flowed through his veins, that it was more a part of him then his self even was. Because there was a point where every smile his self had was a genuine one, that every breath had a purpose, that there was a desire and a goal his self could touch, that his dreams were obtainable. But that point hadn't brought the cause to light, it had held it somewhere dark, somewhere he could not even taste on the breath of the wind.

And to him it was ridiculous, to think that hair so perfectly long, so colored like the sun, would ever be covered with anything so red; to think that a shirt could fit a body so perfectly, yet not at all, that eyes could be so bright, bursting with the energy the world would feed off of. To think that, out of all the people, they could be the only one who spoke reason so clear, so to the point, yet support in everything he did; everything his self did. To think such things could be such a tragedy.

To think that, out of every creature on the world, out of every life that had ever live, out of every object ever built…

It had been his best friend to make him hate his self.