This is a veritable identity crisis. What makes me myself is slowly being stripped away from me. I only hope there is a raw naked infant in there somehow, who can start anew, innocent and happy. That guy Aelfwine, who has similar problems but is a nice, loving soul, has been saying most of what I feel. Layers peeled away, and not as skins to shed naturally but as... I don't know... false teguments? Camouflage? No, this is what I thought they were. They are things and people which I had all the right to love and like, and which I got rid of, consciously or not, before they hurt me, before someone else tore them away from me. It's the only explanation if you see me entirely indifferent to something that I was crazy about a moment ago.
A few days ago, I saw it happen live. A friend unfairly criticized something I love. Suddenly a sort of window opened inside my mind. Instead of trying to defend it, which probably would have made me angry and not nice to my friend, I cooly and clearly saw myself pushing that thing away, telling myself "But it's not so important for me after all." I reacted like this to a double fear: of being hurt by my friend and of hurting her in return with my words.
Friends, right. Something else that I'm learning to do without. And what is a person without friends, without a mirror to understand where this person does right or wrong? I don't want this mirror anymore. Something happened a few weeks ago. I stopped talking about it to them because it was becoming a sterile polemic, but it all boiled down to this for me: a friend had taken a decision behind my back, based on second-hand opinions (because I had never talked directly to him about that matter) and without asking for my view, something that I hate, and they know I hate it. I was shocked for days. Then I placed this in the larger picture: no matter whose fault it is or whether there is any fault, I don't trust friends anymore. I feel judged, and can't take it light-heartedly. So for a while it is better to detach myself from everything and everyone.
But I'm getting better. I finally left the Order, not before doing a lot of damage. But meanwhile I had made new friends. They had asked me to do things for them. I had accepted. I started having obsessive nightmares again, about disappointing them on a massive scale, for 4 or 5 days. I decided to let it go and refuse all my obligations towards these friends and lessen my interaction with them. Nightmares stopped. Pure mathematics.
All that is left to me is the ghost of my mother and a crazed house elf. This is not good. But I can't let this go. It's my last shred of identity.
Sirius Black |