Dragon

気持ち悪い。

I feel like I should try to say something about this. I'm not so sure how well I can express it in words, but I suppose I ought to try.

There's a coldness, a bitterness, a resentment; a cocktail of cynicism and alienation, of emotional blunting and asociality, all with a tinge of resigned inevitability. It's always been there, I think, to a greater or lesser extent, a shimmer against the horizon once; but now it laps at me like the tides, at some times distant, at other times washing over me, but ever present even at a minimum.

Maybe it's depression. Maybe it's PTSD. Maybe it's schizophrenia. Maybe it's some personality disorder, or something else entirely, or all of the above. The label I use doesn't ultimately matter; the approach—my approach—would remain unchanged.

After all, I'm not sitting idly by. I fight against it, strive to be warm and empathetic and kind to others, to be generous and to act with virtue as I best understand it, irrespective of whether the sentiments are ever returned. I go to great lengths to take care of my health, rigorously minding my sleep and diet and exercise routine alike. I push myself to be social in the outside world, going to the gym, out on walks, over to friends' houses, to movies and clubs and concerts and parties.

Yet it feels as though I'm trying to fight the tides themselves, for all the good it does. Even with no intention to stop, no desire to quit and resign myself to being a cold and bitter bastard, I feel a certainty at the bottom of my mind, an upwelling from my subconscious that I know better than to try vainly to repress or deny.

There's no defeating those feelings.

Rather, it's a core part of who I am, of what I am.

How could I not feel it, with what I've felt and heard and seen and done?

How could I not feel it, seeing how things are and knowing where they'll go?

How could I not feel it, stuck in a world with no proper place or role for something and someone like me, in a world I have to distort simply to fit through its doors, regardless of whatever talents I hone or virtues I display or machines I create?

Not that I dislike being who and what I am—quite the opposite, rather. Indeed, I could never be any other way, any other person, any other thing than Kyou System.

All the same, I dread becoming a dragon: Temperamental, territorial, reclusive, a monstrous intellect vast and cool and unsympathetic, sleeping alone on my pile of gold and breathing fire at any who venture too close.

Are my efforts to the contrary in vain? Only time will tell; though, what alternative do I have? What else can I do but live my life and execute my duty as best I can, even if it amounts to nothing in the end?