#99 - Seeing Red

Today’s words: Power, Hands, Sharp, White

Word count: 361

Completion time: 18 minutes

Summary: A man who everyone expects too much of finds other ways to display his aggression

There are references to self-harm, so, yeah.

Note: Despite the last sentence, there ARE other, safer ways to handle issues, and it's best to talk to someone if you're feeling this way. I was just trying to step into the shoes of someone who thought that it was the only option. Stay safe, guys x

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Society has given him too much power, he thinks. Trust a man with that much power and they have the ability to destroy almost anything; many obstacles will be obliterated just by his existence. But what if his main obstacle, his main challenge, is himself? How does he knock down that barrier? Easy.

He looks down at his hands, grabs a sharp knife and destroys the only solid thing that is supposed to keep him together, the thing that’s supposed to protect him from harm. He realises quickly that it can’t protect him from everything, most of all – himself.

People expect him to get angry, to lash out, to quit being a pussy if someone agitates him and he decides to turn his cheek only to get it slapped.

“You’re a man, aren’t you?”

He was. He was a man, but he was less of a man than the men who weren’t so passive, so weak, so...’girly’.

As a child, he’d wonder why he preferred to hang out with girls, why his facial hair never really developed, why he hated action movies. Boys were supposed to hang with other boys, boys were rugged, boys loved explosions and fight scenes. And if he wasn’t a boy, a man, what was he? The answer wasn’t hidden beneath the skin, in fact, there is only one answer: a boy who isn’t like other boys is a boy. No more or no less than the ones who act ‘like a boy’. Still, he struggles.

He scratches his skin like it’s an eternal itch, like he wants to rid himself of it altogether, like he wants to start again in a new, better body.

He drops the metal implement into the sink, watching as it draws a swift line of red against the white porcelain. This isn’t the right way to live my life, he thinks, and it won’t solve anything, but if I can’t use my hands against others, I’ll use them on myself. It’s safer that way.

There are better ways to handle it, it’s easy for an outsider to say, but what if it felt like the only way to release pent-up aggression?