The Start of Something New

Originally Posted: 10/16/08

This is a healing process and a hurting process. For all my sadistic tendencies, for all the pleasure I derive from causing pain, I have ever been a kind of masochist. There are things about me, dark and brooding things, that must be ousted if I am to rejoin the world you live in. Contradictions and misconceptions which I, in my infernal wisdom, must come to grips with and redefine if ever I am to surface with the sun again. I am on unstable ground, still reeling from the cataclysms, from wars and earthquakes. My body trembles with each new step, recreating itself from the ashes and memories. The heart I had is lost, replaced by something somehow more profound. Not that I am heartless. If anything, I grow more hearty by the day.

I have lost something, but it need not be an ineffable loss. It need not be something that remains out of reach. It isn't unattainable. What I have gained, I think, is a clearer state of mind. A desire to reach out and make my fascination with Salvation something more. To seize it, to become Redemption and find out where the path leads. Too long have avoided trudging down that road, been daunted by the thought of peering into my own darkness and seeing the soul therein. Perhaps I feared what I might find, but there are hints scattered along the way, like fallen autumn leaves. Old relics and clues, dried up now with time. They speak to me all the same. They speak of hurting myself, but healing. Of mending things that I have left broken for so many years. My personas reached a consensus and I know its time to change.

Sometimes trauma brings out the best in us.

I wonder sometimes if you're Night or Salvation. Both I embody in similar terms. Nearly nymph-like. Young and virile, elusive without being distant. Its spiritual and sexual in ways I can't define, but both are, for me, intertwined. Its romantic and light-hearted as it is filled with sorrow and the absence of warmth. I wonder if you're both. It would explain the way you fascinate me. The way that I feel compelled toward you. The way that you elude me because of my own foolishness. I hunger for more of something, but it is not a natural hunger. Its a need surpassing all others. I have to know more.

This is the first thing that has excited me this way in so long. Its time to tread that path. Take up the names and the identities that come with it. This time not to bury myself, but to reveal myself through other means. I am to travel, I think, within. Perhaps you, Love, lie at the end of this road, or somewhere along it. Perhaps not. I suppose there is only one way to know, and that is to follow where it leads.

I am Vengeance and Redemption. I am a seeker of knowledge, of wisdom, of higher things. I am many things, some good and some not. I am, above all, a mystery even unto myself. That, at least, I can rectify. For now, I will remain hidden, enigmatic, and wrapped up in my journies. I will sojourn within myself for a time and when I have the answers I will turn my face, again, toward the sun. Until then, know I walk with you like the spectre in my dreams. Haunting, but not to be feared, nor loathed. Even in this there is beauty. The eyes must just be opened to see it.

Most of all, I thank you for what you've done and what you've forced me to do. I mean that with every bit of sincerity that any praise can ever hold. If there is any better reason to love you, I have not found it. You have, among many other things, my deepest gratitude. As I said once, long ago before we parted, we won't say goodbye. Just say "I love you" and "Goodnight". Goodbyes sound too much like death, and there will be no dying here. Not now, not ever.

Apologies, though they linger, will wait a little longer. I won't speak them now, because they are not yet fit for life. But know that when I say I'm sorry, I will know the reasons why. You may accept them or decline, what matters is that I will know, and will be able to share, the reasons for what happens.

Shuffled steps will not make for a short trip, and so I lift my feet, open my eyes, and turn down the path before me. Salvation remains elusive. Night I see in the distance, and all before me the great, guarded expanse of Self. Of Redemption. This is no easy task, but even now the air is clearing. My lungs, eager to breathe the cleanness of it in, expand and I smile contentedly. Someday...

Yours, and ever closer,
-Nemesis