{"id":2560,"date":"2013-09-10T00:06:22","date_gmt":"2013-09-10T08:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2560"},"modified":"2013-09-10T00:06:22","modified_gmt":"2013-09-10T08:06:22","slug":"final-battles-09092013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=2560","title":{"rendered":"Final Battles \u2013 [09\/09\/2013]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"controller\"<\/a>You should have given it to me [anyone else] will only break it. They always do.<\/i><\/p>\n

Aye, but that is my choice to make, not yours. I hope your sisters will not be too hard on you.<\/i><\/p>\n

They will be no harder than I deserve\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

~ Neil Gaiman, Stardust<\/i><\/p>\n

I warn you, this is personal, I’m not apologizing for that, just stating a fact so you can avoid it if you choose.<\/p>\n

I have long characterized my old issues as dragons. Most of those dragons are well chained and tamed and have wasted away into nothing. I simply refuse to feed them. But there are others, there are others that are so old I question whether they\u2019re even mine, or if they were passed down to me by some previous generation long forgotten; hatched from the shifting mire of social expectations and past experiences and images placed in my mind before I was old enough to comprehend their meaning.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s gone mostly silent over the years, but never completely disappeared. In some ways, much as I hate to admit it, I think I take a twisted kind of comfort in his presence. I hadn\u2019t thought of that until someone very dear to me asked me yesterday whether or not I really wanted to get rid of it. Whether I was ready. My first instinct was to snap at him:<\/p>\n

What do you mean!? Don\u2019t you think I\u2019ve tried?! Don\u2019t you think I\u2019d love to be free of it? It\u2019s like a snake eating its own tail, I cut it off, it always regenerates\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n

Not if you kill it for real.\u00a0 I just mean that there\u2019s comfort in routine, even if it\u2019s negative, if something\u2019s been a part of you for so long, it\u2019s got to be hard to let go of it\u2026even if you want to.<\/i><\/p>\n

And I just looked at him, and I blinked, and I cursed myself for having such wise friends, and I realized that he\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

This is an old slithering beast, reduced to animal instinct, blind and groping in the darkness with snapping teeth and hissing voice. That\u2019s all he is, nothing more than a voice, a low growl that is repeated more out of habit than anything. It\u2019s not the dragon\u2019s fault that he is what he is; he is merely performing his function in life. I should have killed him long ago, just like you would put down a favorite pet that was suffering, but he has been around for so long that I\u2019m unsure how to go about it. If I am not his chosen prey, who am I? His presence has been so much a part of me that I don\u2019t quite know what will happen when I release him from this world.<\/p>\n

But I am no longer his prey. I have not been for a long time now. Not in most senses. He is purposeless, a puppet that I have long been allowing to have too much influence on me. A shadow of a shadow.\u00a0 A reflection of a long dead thing. The scars his claws have left may never fully fade, there are some remnants of dragon attacks that will always leave a mark; a twinge there, an unexpected tear there, a soft hiss in the darkness that catches you at an unexpected moment. But no more roaring, no more devouring. Chained, bound and snapping at nothing, living off scraps that it creates for itself from the vestiges of shadow that creep into the light of my existence, the beast is starving. Kept alive only by my acknowledgement of him.<\/p>\n

In a fight of wolf verses dragon, most people would put their well earned money on the dragon, and there was a time when this would have been true, but not now. The wolf is the strong one now, and she lays back her ears and growls like thunder and the dragon\u2019s chains rattle back into the darkness, not in power but in fear. In retreat.<\/p>\n

Now, perhaps it\u2019s time for me to undo those chains, calm his shaking scales, close his eyes and let the piteous creature sleep. Let the darkness take him back to where he belongs, and before I deliver that final killing blow, perhaps it is time to answer the question he has always hissed in my ear:<\/p>\n

Yes. But only on my terms. And those terms don\u2019t make me a bad person, and they also don\u2019t include you anymore.<\/i><\/p>\n

I promise I\u2019ll try to make it quick. After all this time, I owe him at least that much.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You should have given it to me [anyone else] will only break it. They always do. Aye, but that is my choice to make, not yours. I hope your sisters will not be too hard on you. They will be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,48,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-med-2013","category-reflections-below-the-waterline"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-Fi","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2560"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2562,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2560\/revisions\/2562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}