Flaw

Yesterday I looked at myself in the mirror and thought, You're beautiful. You're gorgeous! You're friendly and funny and fiercely passionate about what matters to you and the people you love. You're clever and adventurous. There's something that burns inside you like copper sulfate, haunting, ethereal. It scares people. It excites them. It makes them want to experiment with you. It draws them in and your personality makes them stay. Things are fine. You are okay.

Today that certainty fell to ash. My fire intimidates others. Once they get too close they see, by the light of my own passion, that I am ugly. I'm an oasis in the desert, a siren with a fish head. I'm too much and not enough. Not worth the trouble, not good enough. Never a perfect fit. I may still be funny, but the less someone likes you, the less they're inclined to laugh.

Soon you'll scare everyone away, I tell myself. And no one will laugh. You will cease to be funny. All you'll be left with is your wit, which will turn to cynicism, which will wrinkle and tear at your face and heart.

Confidence flits and flutters. It fades and frays. A useless friend. A liar. A thief.

But without it, I am miserable. Without it, I am nothing to anyone, no one. I have no future, no hope, no cause, no goal. Without it, I am alone. Doubly alone because I do not even have the support of my self.

Fickle friend. 

Faustian foe.

Tomorrow it might be back. When I've picked myself up and convinced me that I no longer need it, there it will be.

Laughing.

Inescapable.

Necessary.

Evil.