the funny thing about my teenage years being the most important and impactful period of my life is that i don't remember a lot of it.

i used to get these periods where i'd just... space out. it wasn't like your usual spacing out- i did that all the time- it was more like i was floating outside my body. just barely paying attention to anything, watching myself do actions and say things and none of it really mattering because i didn't care. it was all you and no i, y'know? and when i was like that, everything was a blur. fuzzy, undefinined.

i still do it sometimes. q always catches on though. they've learned to watch out for that. i gave them a huge scare when i was 15.

man, you should have seen the thoughts that went through my head when i was younger. especially concerning q. sometimes, it felt like i was worshipping them. there's a large difference between liking someone because they're a good person, and liking someone because you think they're better than you. you should know that. both of them can be true, of course, but the kinds of stuff i'd imagine were on the latter.

...

i used to imagine that they pulled my heart out of my chest.

whole thing, dripping blood and viscera. they'd examine it like an egyptian god, red running down their fingers. they'd scrutinize it, and then, at that point, the daydream would converge, into a messy clashing of desperate pleas for q to forgive me for being such an awful fucking person, or where all they would do is sit down and hold it gently while i slowly died beside them.

other times, they would beat me. i'd say something, something stupid or noncommital, or really, anything at all, and bam! down i went. onto the floor, their shoes smashing into my ribs, their words slashing me in every way they knew how. they'd tear at my neck and rip my ears off with their teeth and leave me without identity or purpose. and i never protested. because to me, surrendering to that kind of terror was the ultimate act of loving somebody. i thought that, not because anyone taught me to feel that way, but because at the time, it was the only way i could possibly fathom loving myself.

and it felt... odd. loving q like that. desperate. just an endless yearning for violence. i know part of it was me being influenced by the mist or whatever, but even after the mist got its powers taken away, i still... felt bad. maybe not throwing myself off a cliff bad, but still bad, tugging at me in the mornings when i didn't want to wake up, or clawing its way up my throat whenever i made a fool of myself. take my liver! take my blood! break my bones! hurt me! destroy me! i know you have a good reason for it! i'll let you do it! i'll lie here! you're the only person i'd let do something like this! i can't offer anything else to you! i'm useless! just take the physical parts of me and leave!

of course, i don't think i ever properly explained that to them. i... don't think they need to know about that.

thing is, q would never in a million years do that. q is a lot of things, but they are not violent. they are angry and closed off and anxious and tearful and erratic and frustrated but they are not violent. the room gets real cold when they get mad. they've told me that when they got angry at their parents for never being home when they were a teenager, they'd imagine their home bursting into flames. but they never did anything. all the people and all the places and all the gods they hated never received as much as a finger laid on them. a lesson in either discilpline, or the fact that q truly is just... kind. they don't want to harm anyone. they don't want to harm me. so what version of q, exactly, am i thinking of when i think of them trying to kill me? in what universe does that happen?

the answer is none. because i know they wouldn't. and i'm sure the judge can confirm that for me.

i love q for a lot of things. i love them for their glares, and the whistles that interrupt their sentences, and the way they act so uptight around people they don't know. i love that we share a love for quantum physics, and our chess competitions, and the way that they curl around me whenever we forget to go to our separate bedrooms and end up falling asleep together. i love them for their sense of righteousness, and how gentle they are with thier hands, and the fact that they can't read emotion that well so they end up having to inference off of action instead. i love them for all their scandalized reactions to normal, everyday things, and i love them for how, even 20 years after my mom decided that q wasn't getting the attention they needed at home, are still trying to pay her back by making sure she can get all the degrees in medical sciences that she wants. i love q, because they're my best friend and well... they're q. and they've stuck by me even after years of sharing a house together, and seeing me go through vicious ups and downs. i've never loved them for the imaginary blood that they shed.

for most of my preteen, teenage years, it felt like i didn't have an identity. i did things, sure, i climbed trees and knitted and wrote and drew and yet i was none of those things. my mom would define me as her child, q could define me as a friend, and yet i still just... didn't feel like i was really living for myself. nothing to prove. just one day to the next, passing through daydreams and daymares and imagining swords running through my chest and what it'd feel like to die and whether a human truly can surive just being turned into individual atoms and molecules.

but a few, quiet years have passed, and i think something's changed.

i do want to live.

i want to live for the sun streaking through the windows in the morning. for the cats i see at my shelter job. for the books i haven't read, and the ones that i have. for the people that i pass on the street. for the smiles and frowns sent my way. for a theoretical class reunion. for a new money design. for the growing of trees. for the passing of animals. for the walls of the house, and the voice of my mother, and the yarn tangled in my closet, and the promise bracelet around my wrist.

most of all though, i want to live for myself.

even if i hate myself, even if i think i am the worst, most horrible human being demigod thing on this planet or in this galaxy or even in this universe, i want to live so i see myself happy. i want to live so i can take pride in all the things i've accomplished and the things i am still working towards. i exist, and that is a miracle in itself, and god shouldn't we celebrate miracles? every single little atom and quark of them? horribleness is relative, after all, and sometimes electrical signals go a little screwy. it's okay. it's okay. i'm going exist, and that in itself is not a crime.

and as for the violent fantasies, if q tried to kill me, i still think i'd let them. they are my life partner after all, and i think it'd be a fitting end.

but i won't beg for it anymore.