Socks and Shoes

I.... am different. I guess it's always been that way, ever since I was a child. It's just... something I grew up with. Learning was... never hard, and I could pick almost everything up when I tried it for the first time... it was like I wasn't even having to learn. Like I was picking something up that I'd set down a long time ago. It.. doesn't make sense, I know it doesn't make sense, but that's how it felt.

It always felt like I'd been there before, done everything before... But, every time I tried to learn why, I stopped. I don't know why, but it felt like I was choking, or drowning on dry land. I wanted to know why everything was so... old to me. I remember seeing buildings when they were being built that stood there centuries before I was born. I remember glimpses... slices of the past, of places I've never been, of things I've never done, as if they were my own. 

But, no matter how weird that was, how horrifying it could be to wake up in the middle of the night clawing at my face as it burned, like something was forcing it's way through me, that's not why I'm different. Or rather, it's not the only reason I'm different. It's hard to explain. If it wasn't, I'd have told someone this. I've never told anyone any part of this... even my family, who were around me when I burned and screamed and cried, when I woke up with burn marks against the side of my head from something I've never touched, didn't know.

They thought I was diseased, or that I was sleep-walking and injuring myself, but I knew I wasn't. I knew that it was something I was born to understand, born to come to terms with, but no matter how many books I've read, how many hours of lectures I've taken, nobody ever has an answer to my question "Why am I... wrong?"

I've always felt that way. I do my best, I save thousands of lives, I protect hundreds of others, I do everything I can and yet I'm not right. I don't match with myself. I can stare into mirrors and see someone staring right back at me, where I am, as if I'm no-one. A ghost, a doppelganger filling someone else's shoes. It's like... I'm wearing two different socks, one red... one black. I know that if I ever showed them to anyone, they'd notice immediately, they'd say I was blind.. or that I was stupid. Even if they wouldn't say it, I know they'd mean it.

So I try and cover those clashing socks up with shoes, with medical slippers, with the boots of a soldier, of a judge, of a hero. I try everything to hide them, but as much as other people might be able to see me riding tall among the ashes, I know they're still different, underneath.

Keeping secrets is something you have to come to terms with, no matter how good a person you are, no matter how clear your conscience, every human being has their secrets. I'm no saint, if anyone ever says they are then they lied to you, but I'm nothing remotely close. I have... hurt people, even when I don't mean to. I've said words in anger that have broken people, that have sent those I love fleeing away from me like I'm some kind of monster.

I have played people like they were nothing but chess pieces, I have confessed love to earn paltry items, I lecture but I'm just as bad as any monster, cos those I hurt I don't mean to. I'm like a gun that goes off in the wielder's hand, hurting the one I was supposed to protect. But beyond all that, all the secrets of the past six centuries, my biggest secret is that the boots I wear are... cheap.

They were never meant to last, and underneath, those clashing socks still lie. For a while, for the longest while, I could pretend that I was going sockless, that I was just wearing shoes, but... I don't know how much longer they'll last. The soles are giving in, and the laces have snapped, and they're starting to slip off when I walk. 

When I'm around others, with my cousin, my sisters... I put a red sock over the black, so I match and it makes them happy. They think that I'm normal, that I'm their wonderful, intelligent big brother, and I just have to sit there, hoping they never look too closely. It... feels weird, like I'm just playing a game, like nothing I've said for so long feels... real. Even when I try and be honest with those I like, with those I care about, with those I love... it's just false, because I'm still pretending like I match.

But, it makes them smile, so I try and keep them distracted, hoping one day that I'll be able to stop pretending, that I'll be able to peel the black sock off and not just act like its not there any more. But, it won't... I know it won't; every time I sleep, I dream of what my attempts to cover up those clashing socks has caused me to do, of all those lives lost in an attempt to act like I'm normal, and I wake up screaming. 

A seven hundred year old man, screaming and crying in his bed because of something he can't control...

I don't sleep any more.