Dragon

Although I try to reach my inner feelings, it seems almost impossible task to complete. I feel barren, empty, cold inside… I see that people seem to want to reach out to me, but I feel no warmth in their eyes, smile or touch. The coldness has grasped me in a tight embrace, and won’t let go. I see that people who I thought of as indispensable for survival are now people who I care about deeply but that I don’t wish at my side for 24/7. I see that I have become a self-resolving entity that can and wants to do everything herself without any help. I see that I have hurt so badly that I won’t allow myself to love and trust because the ideas are grey in themselves.

I find no joy in the things I used to like… roleplaying games have become sour and bittersweet because of all the memories they bring, of a past imperfect that somehow seems ideal… I see friends being friends, enjoying the simpleness of life, of hours passed in togetherness, bound by dice… And it all was good, and right, and fun… Even sharing just bread and juice it was alright… No need for Chilis or Ponderosa or anything fancy… just bread and juice and everyone was happy, and games went on and imagination thrived… Past imperfect… Lovely… Gone…

I find myself with no inspiration to write or paint… No inspiration to create anything different or shocking… No inspiration that brings out my artistic passions… My art is faded. My hopes of being this great artist that changes her surroundings are dead… I see that my art means nothing to people. I see that people cannot understand my creative inclinations. I see that people brand me as inmature, mad, excentric…I see that for all I have done not even a memory of it remains on people’s minds. And it’s hurtful… Because I have done many things, big things… for free… I have given myself in that art… And no one remembers, but me. Where I see I have succeeded, everyone sees failure. Where I see beauty, everyone sees grotesque. Where I see inspiration, everyone sees mockery.

Who I was? For so many years, growing up within a catholic school… pushed as a high achiever… doing more than my best… I recited poems, and essays… I made scenographies and decorations for so many parties to which I was not even invited out of courtesy… I had the talent to participate in school plays, but everyone confined me to scenography because I was a fat ugly girl by their standards… I could act but that was only for pretty bimbos that looked the right way… I grew up in a school of horrors where the talented where the prettiest anorexic girls who showed all their assets. So I gave my art, painting… and not even a thank you… So I excelled in all my classes… No one could pry on my mind to take away what I learned. I cannot yearn for my years of high school because there was nothing… Nothing but a fat ugly girl who was always seated in the floor, in a corner… drawing and writing and drawing… That was me. Quiet, lonely, silent eyewitness and silent martyr of society… I fed my brain. I had inspiration out of my rage against the world. Everything was dark and grey. People were two-faced monsters. My best friends were my vilest of enemies. Little has changed my opinion of the world. It was all a micro-world of the real world… sadly… Take away that, the hurt of people pushing me aside just because I was different… Yes, different because I was inmersed in my fantasy world where Thundercats and medieval warlords fought side by side… I was different because I was not interested in dating or in looks. I saw boys as just… humans… the same as girls… I have never dated anyone… At school dances no one invited me out to dance. I was there to serve, and decorate… but I never enjoyed an activity because I was made of cellophane… Yup “pass right by me, and never know I’m there”. Having talents and people using you to get them and then people tossing you aside is something that marks you… forever.

And yet… I had no ill desires towards anyone. I knew good and I knew evil… And I always fought evil. I never said no, because I knew that giving is an eternal pound. And when you have talents, they are God’s gift to you, so you give it to the world… In all the hurt I had, I always found a way to smile and help my friends. I quietly solved problems. I quietly gave all I had. I spent lunch hours at the chapel, alone, just reading the Bible, or just thinking while in darkness, while keeping my sight on a candle… I may have been a fat bitch that no one really wanted, but I was beautiful inside-out. I had a light within my eyes that no one could extinguish. I was innocent. An innocent creative entity that lasted too long in a world that destroys everything.

Grammar and high school are in the far past now. No lasting memories of true glee… Everything was a façade of smiles. My best friend of 11 years betrayed me so badly… And on 12th grade I rebelled against everyone and everything. That was the first time I said NO. And it felt bad, but it was the beginning of unleashing the red dragon within me, my true nature… Saying no put a stop to being used and having people who didn’t really mattered around me. And so, casualty brought some unlikely people into my life. And from those unlikely people, one that changed me forever… My true love.

Playing dungeons and dragons became a daily thing… I started college and took my classes and kept good grades, and I always found time for games. I had never experienced a closeness as I did back then, among all the people that played… Gilberto, Anthony, Vanessa, Papito, Sara, Eduardo, Feliu and Steve… Not all my favorites, but we were all players and that was reason enough to get together and share an adventure. Time narrowed the bridge between Gilberto, Anthony, Steve and me. We became close friends. And between Gilberto and me began a stormy relationship that exists to this day... still very stormy indeed. Alex was an addition to the group… and time made him my best friend… and he still is… Steve has evolved into something that is not a friend and not a boyfriend… I regard him as family. Thanks to playing a little game I found the people with whom I want to share my life forever, people that matter to me as much as I matter to them. Alex, Gilberto and Steve are the family I wished I had, they are the ones I have come to love more than life, and although that love could be flesh-related, it has more to do with their souls… People don’t understand this, and so I am deeply misunderstood. I see what is beyond their eyes. They have been able to touch my soul, and once you do that, there is no turning back. I would give my life for them. That much they mean to me. And that has stood the test of time. My love for these three is endless, and will go on throughout time and space and reason and sanity. They are the ones who dared to face a red dragon, and tamed her in different ways.

Who I am? What I am? What is the reason for my being here? The red dragon, always… Seems that it doesn’t matter where I go, people will never understand me… I will never fit in because I was made to break molds… I am aware of my talents and I use them because I don’t waste the opportunities to put them to good use… And I am aware that a circle had been unleashed that goes around me being the ugly duckling doing the hard work and the hyennas doing the job that gets the applause. Another era of big no’s awaits… I am tired of my art being underrated, of my abilities being treated by people as something that is not really the best… Because I know what I do is beyond good… Because I know I can do things that will trascend time… I am ahead of my time, born at the wrong moment and in the wrong place… I cannot be made little by people, of all things… I was born to be free, to make my own destiny, to fly away and discover new horizons… Dragons cannot be chained. When they stay is because they will so. When they love is because they will so. They are majestic because in all their might they go on with a capacity of being childlike, curious, sincere, enigmatic, loyal, noble...

I have been chained by the little people, and I have been kept within a dungeon… away from soaring skies… away from endless seas… away from dreams and inspiration… I have been chained by ignorance, by fear, by envy and hate, from all of those who cannot understand me and so, they just want me to stop existing. I have been chained by todays’society that bans the simple values of humans and mistakes freedom for chaotic anarky. I have been chained by dissapointment, the biggest coming from the trio that I love the most... so it’s those dissapointments that hurts the most as well… I have been condemned to solitude, caged in a prison of apathy, doomed to be forgotten…

My great purpose is yet to be revealed. All I know is who I am… And how I am trapped… And how I long to be free of everything… So I am sad… For just a magical moment, I wish for happiness… just once.