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To my brother. Ōdī et amō. Quārē id faciam fortasse requīris. Nesciō, sed fierī sentiō et excrucior. I hate and I love. Why I do this, perhaps you ask. I know not, but I feel it happening and I am tortured. Catullus 85
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not bring My passions from a common spring. Alone, Edgar Allan Poe
“I know a devil when I see one.” “And just how many devils have you met?” I ask her, leaning down close, the blade still against her neck. I hear her swallow. “Not many,” she admits, “but every time I look in the mirror, there’s one staring back at me.”
Monsters always get away with more in the dark.
when you’re raised with monsters, those with the dullest teeth seem the most angelic.
That’s part of our movie. The foolish girl thinking she can cleanse the sins of the devil himself. But maybe she can.
How can someone be both so brutal and so…kind?
Romantic comedies never have devils in them. It’s why they’re so easy for me to watch. I don’t get attached to the good guys.
“Why’re we here?” He puts two more boxes of the same cereal on top of mine. “You’re eating all the food in my damn house.” I feel myself flushing, but he tips my chin up, noticing. “I don’t care, Ella,” he says, like he really doesn’t. “As long as I can eat you in my house, too.” I blush harder, and I know my face is the shade of a tomato, but he pulls me in by the throat and kisses me, hard, right on the lips.
He might be god, and I might fall at his feet, but this way? Don’t gods want willing submission? They don’t want to force their subjects to their knees…do they? Isn’t that why we have free will? Do I have free will here with him? I’m not so sure anymore.
Basements always have secrets in the movies, right? And girls that go down in them alone in the dark always die.
Amor fati. A favorite of the 6; love of fate. Another way to say that no matter how bad life fucks you, it’s all for the greater good.
Factum fieri infectum non potest. It is impossible for a deed to be undone.
That cruelty. That fucking chaos. It makes her feel like someone cares. Cares enough to hurt her. To make her learn a lesson. To want to teach her, like I do, even if it’s with violent hands. Gods do that sometimes. They bring a lesson from the pain.
“Hate me. Hurt me. Heal me,” he says again. “Well, come on, baby. Play God with me.”
I’m sick of playing with gods, and even as I scratch at his hand, try to get him to let go, I don’t think I’ll really care. If he wants to steal my breath, let him have it. Gods always win, in the end. Even if we get down on our knees and bow our heads and say our prayers, they take our lives anyway, and he’s already got my heart. What’s my lifeless body to add to the offering?
“I felt like a stupid kid because love isn’t real and it doesn’t happen that fast and the people I love... I always hurt them.”
I don’t wanna go anywhere you’re not going, even if you take me straight to hell.
I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. Shakespeare wrote that in “Richard II”, and goddamn do I feel it.
Mos Maiorum, the unwritten code that says we put our brothers before ourselves.
Pretty soon, these bricks might seem like they’re closing in on me, or maybe they’ll seem like the gates to fucking heaven. Thus, the nature of psychedelics; like a box of chocolates, you really never know what you’re gonna get. But my brain is infected with darkness, so I have a pretty good idea.
“There’s no difference between love and hate, Mavy. The opposite of those is indifference, and if you could hurt me, if you could like it, I mattered to you. Just like I mattered to her.”
Is it just what her heart wants? Can we ever deny that feeling, no matter what we know? Can logic ever win? Or is it the insanity of love, every time?
“Fac, si facis.”
Do it if you’re going to do it.
“Vivere miltare est.” To live is to fight.
“Memento mori.” Remember death.
Sometimes you leave the things you love, to keep them safe from just how strong your love can be. Because you love them enough to save them from yourself.
I realize that love is strange. It can be mad, and it can be a cruel sort of chaos. It can be violent and terrible and damaging. That part I’ve understood, since I was a kid. What I didn’t get was that…it’s okay. It doesn’t matter how awful it is. There is no right way to love. There’s no wrong way, either, not really. It’s out of our hands. Love is love, and it meets people exactly where they’re at.
And I didn’t write it. Maybe we just are what we are, and no kind words or tearful moments will change the dark inside of us. Maybe we’re all born a little wrong. Maybe some people get to grow right, with love and care and attention. But the rest of us, we stay wrong, and we harden.
“And I know I don’t deserve you, Ella. I’ve known that since the moment I met you, sitting against that tree like the world could go fuck itself as long as it left you alone.” He huffs a little laugh. “And I didn’t,” he continues. “I couldn’t leave you alone.”
“I fucking love you and I didn’t see you coming. I never saw this coming, okay? But I love you and your fucking red hair and your freckles and how you could eat everything in my goddamn house and still want more. I love how you beg me, how you want me to hurt you, how you kiss me. How you’ve defended me more than anyone else has in my life.”
He set my heart on fire when I wasn’t sure I could feel a fucking thing anymore. But I feel him, burning in me, and I know that flame will never go out. He’s not any less damaged than when we first met, and neither am I. It’s not even that our broken pieces fit well together; they don’t. It’s that we’re willing to step in the glass, bleed a little for each other; that’s what matters. That’s what our love is. Broken, bloody, and perfect.
But I always want things I shouldn’t. Things I shove away. Things I run from. I always want what I say I don’t.
That’s the boy I know. A boy of ruin.
