Challenge #133
If only I could actually be the strong, independent person I like to pretend I am when no one else is watching.
Everyone thinks I'm less than they are. I have no one to blame for that but myself. I put on a brave face that makes everyone around me think I don't care. I put up barriers, push people away. Why am I afraid to let people know that I have feelings like everyone else?
I don't think they do it intentionally, mock the futile efforts of having something of my own. I do it to myself. Hoping one day someone will see me there, that my ideas will matter, that I will matter without any true belief that it will happen. That eventually someone will see something other than the picture I present even while trying desperately to keep them from seeing behind my facade.
Sometimes I wonder, am I that insubstantial? What do I need to do to finally be the hero in my own story? To allow myself to be first even in my own head. I've exhausted all of my ideas. I've tried to be my own man and I keep coming back to the fragile existence that I've been allowed by the expectations of others. I keep coming back to Harry and Hermione and the war that we've been fighting since I was a child.
If only I could hate them; my family, my friends; even Harry and Hermione. If only I could turn away long enough to be free of their image of me, to get the distance I need not to be hurt when they think so little of me but I can't. They're all I have and they mean more to me than I mean to myself.
Muse: Ron Weasley
Fandom: Harry Potter
Word Count: 296