The_Luce

This chapter was more difficult for me to write than I thought it would be. It also came out later than I hoped; I had Christmas obligations. A few CWs this time:

Spoiler

Extreme internalized homophobia/transphobia, F slur, mild NSFW content

[collapse]

-- Day 57 --

Masculinity was a terrible thing for those who failed to live up to its standards. When you weren't big enough, weren't strong enough, weren't confident enough, weren't enough to be anything more than a whiny little boy. Cast out by society and told they'll let you back in as soon as you man up.

Well I already fucking tried that.

It was liberating to finally admit defeat, like the weight of expectations - what a man was and wasn't allowed to do, allowed to be - had been lifted, and I was free to discover myself. If there was anything left of me to find, anyway.

I worried that I didn't really have any identity at all - just a matryoshka doll of coping mechanisms with nothing in the core. Pardon my melodrama; that was stupid.

My nipples had gotten puffy, now - two pale pink protrusions sticking out from my chest. They remained hyper-sensitive, and I had painfully bumped them into the doorframe several times in the past month when leaving my room. I tried to imagine what it would be like, what it would feel like, to really have breasts. It would probably be fun.

I never had any fun. I just sat around in my room unproductively feeling sorry for myself. Fucking loser.

For no particular reason, I dressed in girl's clothes again today - I even freshly shaved my legs, the smooth feeling of rubbing them together was oddly enjoyable. Then I stared at myself in the mirror, all dressed up. Without makeup hiding my real face, I just looked like me.

God, I was so ugly. An absolutely pathetic excuse for a male. I made for a better girl, but I still looked awful as one. I wished that I didn't have to do this to myself; that I could just be one or the other, unquestionably. That I wouldn't be so fucking tormented by my inability to be anything more than an angry shell.

I collapsed face-first onto my bed, and instantly realized that was a bad idea. Sharp pain flared through my swollen nipples. God damn it. Why couldn't they just be real boobs already, instead of these tiny, hypersensitive little nubs? Soon enough. Whatever.

There actually was a reason for my dressing, but I didn't want to admit to my own degeneracy. Really, I just wanted to confirm something: it turned me on. Worse, my own self-deprecating thoughts were making it... harder.

My penis strained against my too-tight panties, and the sheer failure present in that sentence burst the dam of my fantasizing.

I was so fucking bad at being a guy, I didn't have any right to call myself one. I ground my crotch into the bed - I was disgusting. I was way better off as a girl, it was my natural place, where I belonged. I thrust my ass upwards, and imagined it being used by... someone.

When I was done, I curled up underneath my blankets, wracked with a severe bout of post-nut shame. God, why were my fetishes so fucking revolting? What ended up going wrong with my psyche to make me so perverted? Why was I fucking aroused by that?

Around the end of 11th grade, I scanned a photo of Sean fucking Murphy from the yearbook, and drew lines across his face in Photoshop to prove how mathematically perfect he was so that my internet friends could see how hard he was mogging me. They just called me gay. For months after, too. I vehemently denied it then, but... they were probably right. Ugh.

Meta-attracted autogynephile. I'd rather be that than... than just a fag. Even if that was exactly what I was. I wouldn't let them be right.

If only I could believe it.

***
-- Day 61 --

Sean had left nine text messages and a missed call when I finally turned on my phone for the first time in a week. I didn't read them, of course, and I turned it back off immediately. What was the point? I'd made a complete ass of myself. Again. As I always inevitably would.

I really hated being alive, sometimes. Most of the time. Pretty much always.

My mother knocked on my bedroom door, and I was too apathetic to yell at her to go away. She let herself in after a moment of silence, wrinkling her nose at the bleak state of my bedroom "Eris? How are you doing?"

I groaned and rolled over in my bed. The wall was a very boring thing to stare at - an unpainted off-white because I had no real personality - but it was better than acknowledging my mother. Why couldn't we go back to mutually ignoring each other? That was nice. Now she kept fucking nagging.

Mom audibly sighed. Seconds later, after the sounds of her shuffling past the mess on the floor, the shifting weight and the creaking springs implied she had sat down beside me. Please go away. She refused my unverbalized request, of course, and continued, "...Please, Eris. Please let me in. I just... I..."

She trailed off. I could hear the subtle sound of sobbing. I didn't care. I did not care. It was meaningless to me. I just wanted her to go away. Go away. Fuck off. Leave me alone to wallow in my misery - I'd gotten quite good at it!

I felt like a complete and utter piece of shit. Probably because I was. I knew I was gonna regret this; I took a deep breath and sat up, "Okay."

The sobbing didn't cease, and she proceeded to wrap me in a tight hug. I groaned, but did nothing to move. I was never good with... this sort of stuff. Was I good at anything, though?

"I love you, Eris. I just want... just want you to be happy."

Several tears somehow managed to break through my apathy - I blamed the girl hormones. Which reminded me: "I ran out of the, uh, estr- the hormones."

"Oh?" she paused.

"Um. Yeah," I pointed at the empty bottle on my desk, "I need to go and, uh, get a refill." I wasn't sure exactly why I felt the need to point that out. Probably, I just wanted a diversion from the emotional moment.

"You wanna walk with me to the pharmacy and we can pick it up?" she asked.

"No."

She sighed, stroking my hair with her hand - I recoiled slightly, but didn't stop her - and pleaded, "We should try to do something together, at some point. I wish you would let me into your life. Can you talk to me? Please?"

"About what?"

"Well, a week ago you got all dressed up to go out for something, and you looked really unhappy when you came back. What happened?"

I did not want her to hear anything about that. It was one thing to kinda somewhat admit it to myself - to my mother? Not a chance, it was far too embarrassing. "I, uh, don't wanna talk about it," I answered.

"Was it a date?"

God damn it, "No. Sort of. I said I don't want to talk about it." I fell back onto my pillow, and stared at the ceiling - heh, boob light.

"I'm guessing it didn't go so well. I'm sorry - I know how it goes too, you know. Just remember that if you ever wanna talk... I'll be here."

Why did she always make me feel so fucking guilty? I didn't want to talk. I was not about to be evicted from my shell; I'd rather retreat further inside. I replied to her with an incoherent grumble.

"Okay. If you don't wanna do anything else, there is one thing we're getting done today," she gave me a look. I didn't like the look. Please, no.

"It's really time to clean your room, Eris."

Fuck.

***

Cleaning my room wasn't actually that bad, despite the years of accumulating neglect. Mostly, it took some latex gloves and a lot of trash and recycling bags - garbage made up the overwhelming majority of the mess in my room. Once that was exhaustingly cleared away - it wasn't much exercise, but it was a lot more than I was used to - what remained were a few scattered articles of clothing, random things I collected from various short-lived interests when I was younger, and a stubborn layer of crust across much of the floor.

I wasn't going to say I made my mother do all the work, but I definitely wasn't putting my full effort in - not that I ever did that for anything. Nevertheless, she made sure I wasn't getting out of this lightly, so it was I who had to mop the gunk off the floor. It was annoying.

There - It was all pristine. Unless you looked under my bed, or in the closet. There was also a pervasive stench in the air - apparently, I could hardly smell it anymore - but I could probably just spray an air freshener until nobody could notice anything.

"Doesn't that feel nice?" my mom asked from behind me, hands on her hips, "A nice, clean room."

Well, clean-looking anyway. "Yeah," was my half-assed reply. It was nice, in a way, but the presentability of it carried an obligation to keep it that way. It felt vaguely suffocating: I was never good at maintenance - of myself, or my belongings.

I was destined, inevitably, to retreat back into my old habits without constant prodding.

"So... you need those meds? Have you changed your mind on us going for a walk."

My eyes narrowed, "No."

She sighed once again, and frowned, "It's okay, I get it. I can pick it up for you, if you want?"

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, and shook my head, "I can get it myself... thanks for helping with my room," I guess, I finished in my head with pathetic snark.

Grabbing my hoodie from off the rack, I walked out of the apartment door. If I got this done now, I'd be free for the rest of the day. Hopefully month. Hopefully forever, but that was wishful thinking. I always had to do things.

***

I once again found myself cast from the familiar - or maybe unfamiliar, now - comfort of my newly-clean bedroom and out into the disturbing world of noises and people and fucking sunlight known as The Outdoors. I couldn’t say I understood the appeal.

Errands were the worst: not content to be done just once, you were forced to repeat them over and over until you died. Just one of the many cruelties of human existence.

A small group of teenage girls across the street passed through the periphery of my vision, all looking like happy, content, people with complex social lives and hobbies and not a trace of existential dread. I hated them.

The thought reminded me of many others just like it, back when I made a passing effort at attending school like a real person, instead of the disgusting, pathetic, perverted slob hiding in their bedroom that I became. What a waste.

I saw my peers every single fucking day, back then, all happier and more fulfilled than me. All dumb enough to not realize the absolute fucking pointlessness of it all, normal enough to handle - enjoy, even - the art of socializing, and personable and attractive enough to have friends and best friends and lovers.

As for me? I didn’t get a single friend. Not one, not for me.

All that was my fault, though, so there was no point complaining. Just desserts to the weird, shitty asshole. Indulging in self-loathing was so much crueler when you had every reason to.

God, I wanted to hit something. The useless testosterone in my veins wasn’t being suppressed enough, I supposed.

I entered the pharmacy and made it all the way to the counter before I realized I forgot to make sure he wouldn’t be working here when I picked up my medications. Just my fucking luck that he was - life’s a cruel joke, and I was the punchline!

It was always him, wasn’t it? It always had to be Sean fucking Murphy putting disgusting thoughts in my head. Well, it was probably inevitable with him being the fucking personification of male perfection. I’d seen the fucker back in the changing room for PE class: all lean muscles and sculpted features - I bet it just came genetically and he didn’t even need to work out that much. When I had just my own scrawny body to compare, it was probably only natural to have those degenerate fantasies.

I preempted him before he could say anything about last week: “I’m sorry about what I did. I can be a bit… argumentative, sometimes. And I don’t handle social gatherings very well. Are we cool?”

Sean looked surprised to see me, but quickly recovered with a reply, “Oh, no, it’s chill. Sometimes people get into disagreements and stuff. I’m sorry you got overwhelmed. I probably should’ve asked if you were comfortable in groups, or something. Oh, yeah, and make sure to apologize to Nikolas at some point too, okay? He’s never been good with conflict.”

He did the thing again - his hair was brown, but in certain light you could see a hint of red in there; I hated it. At least things looked fine between us - or maybe he really just wanted some girldick, I was never any good at reading people’s intentions. What-fucking-ever.

“Okay. I need refills on my prescriptions.”