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Xisuma couldn’t sleep. This wasn’t a new problem by any means, at this point he was more likely to be up and suffering at 2 am than he was to be calmly asleep in bed. He’d been this way for weeks, holed up inside his temporary ‘home,’ which was beginning to feel more like a prison than anything else. His eyes drifted to the curtains, which blocked him from seeing anything outside his room, and he found that he didn’t have the strength to pull them back.
Logically, he knew that he could just walk to the front door and step outside. Really, there was nothing stopping him. In general it was frowned upon for Hermits to go out alone at night, it was seen as a red flag, a sign that they needed to be looked out for a bit more carefully than normal, but Xisuma knew that the chances of somebody being outside near his house right now were pretty small. It was 12:30 in the morning for Stars’ sake, and X didn’t live near anything that should draw Hermits in!
He thought about the night sky, which he hadn’t seen in a while. He could practically feel the way he’d crane his neck to stare up at whatever light he could find, the cool summer wind blowing against his skin as he gaped at the abyss above. Instead, he remained sitting on his bed, the light from his lamp as dim as usual. He curled his legs into his chest as another pang of agony rolled through him.
Really, he doubted it would take much for him to be able to get to sleep. He’d been aware of exactly what the problem was for… a while now, so long that he could barely remember what the absence of this pain felt like. To put it in plain terms, X was lonely. He’d been lonely for a while now, even before he’d recognised it. But lately it had escalated. Xisuma had gone from seeing people who knew him most days, and having a fun social event to look forward to at the end of each week, to only seeing a few people who didn’t really know him every day.
Logically, he knew he should be grateful for the people he had. But his torturous, traitorous heart couldn’t help but burn with bitterness when someone referred to him incorrectly. It couldn’t help but long for the life he had before, which, while far more solitary, was a whole lot more palatable than this . And back then, he’d even had people who referred to him in the right way! Sure he’d been too anxious to tell them his real name, but the one they used for him wasn’t too inaccurate. It might sound a bit problematic from an outside perspective, but to Xisuma it was almost Heaven.
He sighed as he laid back, resting a hand over his ribcage. Why did things have to turn out like this? Why did the group he was always drawn back to, the people he constantly needed to fall back on, the ones who had to support him because he wasn’t in a good enough position to fully support himself, why were they the way they were? Why were they more vitriolic toward people like X than anyone else he’d ever met? What did he do to deserve this, trying to convince them that he was worth the air that he breathed as they fought, tongues sharp, against the hand that Xisuma so pitifully outstretched to them, refusing to pull away even as they sunk their teeth into his flesh. Some part of him thought that he did deserve this, that this was his punishment- his penance- for daring to exist in this world. For continuing to stay even as he was told time and time again that he wasn’t wanted. For-
He took a deep breath in. He didn’t want to continue that train of thought. He knew where it ended, he’d followed it too many times to pretend he couldn’t remember the rocky shoreline at the end of that path. What was he thinking about again? What was he… Oh, right. Loneliness.
The times between seasons had always been hard for X. He found himself sent right back to that little crack he’d hidden in for most of his life, longing to see the sunlight above while knowing that it was far too dangerous. He’d known what he was getting into when he packed his bags at the end of the season. He’d known, but… he hadn’t expected it to hurt this bad.
Maybe, in the time before, it didn’t hurt this bad. Or maybe, when the stinging pain had no visible cause, he could shove it aside more easily and keep moving. Either way, now that he knew, it hurt. It hurt to stare up at people who were supposed to love him and come to the conclusion that they had no clue who he was, and, even worse, to learn that they didn’t want to know.
Sometimes, when the pain got so bad that he found himself sitting in bed, not crying but feeling like he should, Xisuma wanted to tell them. He wanted to rip the dark, bloodstained wool from over their eyes and scream that this is who he was. He wanted to shout and yell and tear something apart- to tear himself apart in front of them, to make them see his scars and let them know what they’d done- but he couldn’t. He couldn’t .
It wasn’t safe, they weren’t violent people by any means, but he couldn’t be sure that the rage and betrayal wouldn’t make them do something they might later regret. And- And if he told them, they might try and prevent him from going back to Hermitcraft. Back to the one place where he was sort-of safe. And on top of that he’d be tearing the scab off an old, barely healed wound, and he really didn’t think he would survive the fights and glares and silent judgement- He really didn’t think he could handle the pain. He’d barely held out against it the first time, and things hadn’t been nearly this bad then.
Really, he was shocked he made it through everything the first time. Letting them drag the knife through that old scar tissue would be stupid and reckless, and he’d surely bleed out before they’d come to their senses and start trying to stanch the bleeding. Well, that was, if they would ever start trying to save him. And if he could barely handle the idea of what had happened before, he couldn’t go through a second round. So no matter how much he wanted to force their eyes open, he couldn’t. He could drag his feet through the lines they’d made for him for a couple more months, and then he could hide from them somewhere quiet until he got his head on straight. Actually they probably wouldn’t give him that much time, and really, it wasn’t like he deserved it.
It wasn’t like he deserved to feel whole or safe. He was a monster hiding in the skin of someone he’d outgrown, and the skin made to hide him was beginning to stretch and tear at the seams, bits of the real him poking through like open sores. He deserved this. He deserved to have to hide and suffer, because why the fuck was he made like this!? Why was he begging for the approval of people who couldn’t care about him? Who shouldn’t care about him. Who continued to think they cared about them because X was tricking them- tricking everyone- into thinking he was someone to admire. The moment he told them the truth they’d abandon him, and Xisuma half wished they would. Then he wouldn’t have to feel guilty about taking from them. Taking so much money, and time, and energy, and taking, and taking, and taking and taking andtakingandtaking andtakingand-
Distantly, he remembered a moment from a year or two ago. It was just after another argument, another attempt at outstretching a hand to the people he loved and trying to bring them into the light. The exact cause of the argument was lost to time, but Xisuma remembered the aftermath. Curling up in his bed like he always did sobbing and whispering under his breath, over and over, “I am not a monster. I am not a monster.”
He isn’t sure when he stopped believing his words, but it was evident that at some point he had. Because if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t feel so guilty. He wouldn’t feel like the worst person on this planet, like he’d done something so shameful, so desecrating that the world would never recover from his existence.
He wished he could say that some part of him refuted that idea. That there was a tiny voice inside him saying that he was wrong, that X wasn’t evil, that him coming into this world hadn’t been some sort of catalyst for world destruction. If that voice ever existed, he guessed it probably died years ago.
Now he knew he was a monster, some sort of vile creature thrown onto this Earth to scratch and tear at all the pure, holy beings to remind them just how much better they were. How, no matter how far down they had sunk, there was someone born to occupy a lower sphere of virtue, one so overflowing with evil that they could never step foot into it.
Xisuma knew that if he could just go to bed, the thoughts would cease for the night, but getting to sleep was a trial in itself. There were two options that he could see, and one of them was much easier. He could stay up until he could barely think, until the light, soft clouds of true mental exhaustion had firmly wrapped themselves around his brain. Until any attempts to stand were reduced to disoriented stumbling, signaling that he was finally safe to put away all his many distractions and go to sleep.
Or, he could choose the other option. He could reach out to someone and try to start a conversation. He didn’t think it would take much for the loneliness to recede enough to let him sleep. Really, a simple ‘good night’ would probably work. But… X didn’t have anyone to talk to. The last person he’d reached out to hadn’t replied, and he was too afraid that they were ignoring him because they hated him to reach out again. He didn’t want to push past any boundaries, he didn’t want to cause anyone discomfort. He didn’t want to make anyone hurt. So he didn’t send another message.
And outside of that, he did have a good conversation going with one of the Hermits. He knew they wouldn’t ignore his pain, however ridiculous, but he also knew that they were stressed out at the moment, and he didn’t want to add to that. Maybe in a couple weeks, when things had gotten less frantic for them, he’d tell them how he felt. For now, though, they were off the table.
And outside of that, Xisuma didn’t know if there was anyone he could reach out to. He’d been busy with playing Decked Out 2, admin work, and his own personal projects, so he hadn’t really kept up any of his friendships very well. He doubted any one of them wanted to talk to X now, especially not about his stupid problems. So he was stuck. He couldn’t talk to the people he was staying with about this, because the loneliness wouldn’t recede unless he talked to someone who actually knew who he was, and he couldn’t talk to anyone else either. He was stuck, and he was alone. Temporarily alone, sure, but still alone. And it hurt.