I am starting to feel it now. Slowly I grant, little by little. It seeps in just that little bit more each day, shades just another tiny piece of my soul to darkness. Am I not trying hard enough? Is it just me? How can a person be surrounded by smiling faces and warm words and still feel the growing ache of this crippling loneliness. It cannot just be me, can it? Is it? It colours all of my interactions with a taint. Like a monstrous claw it seizes all the parts of me that I might share, that might make a difference, make me feel like I am connecting with something, anything, and it cages them all in behind the bars of a warm smile and a flippant remark.

I don't want it there. Crawling through me, slow and menacing, consuming me until I am a shell once more, just the barricade and the smile. I want to share, to have the friendships that I know I am capable of somewhere, somehow. Maybe it is my passion I have lost, my passion for trying, caring, feeling. Feeling anything of depth at all. Maybe she is right and I should find it, coax it. Kindle it a little at a time. I need to do something with myself. Shout perhaps, scream, laugh, cry, argue, connect, be honest and free.

Perhaps it is me, perhaps I am afraid of looking in at the beast and finding it is me all along. Those two things, those two things that stain us all. Pride and fear.