The Stories of an Immortal

A Child's Dream

I don't remember much from when I was a child. There's too many dark memories from that time, making it easier on my already heavy conscience if I just forget I ever had a childhood. But the stories of my past still follow me, whispering throughout my overcrowded life, threatening to dismantle my future.

While I don't remember exactly what happened in those stories, I think I remember how it started. How I started. All of these adventures, stemming from one fairy tale I was told as a baby, one fairy tale that would cause me to make so many of my own.

The tale was simple: there was a good guy and a bad guy and the good guy won. Even at that young age I dreamt of being the hero of my story. I dreamt of being someone who fought monsters with a sword, who saved villages or sometimes the world, who came home to people cheering their name. The strict moral codes of society were driven into me so well that there was no doubt in my mind that there was always a villain and the villain must be stopped.

Now, I've seen more than anyone could ever imagine. And I know that the "good guys" and "bad guys" aren't so black and white. Some people are scum and deserve to be absolutely obliterated, but sometimes they're the ones telling the story, making your job a whole lot harder. Some people are scared, grieving, and desperate: if they do bad things, does that automatically make them villain? Or should we look a little deeper first? Some people pretend to be heroes, hiding behind pretentious morals and self-righteousness, when really they cause more harm than good. And some people, the people I find the most heroic, aren't the ones carrying a sword or a spell, they're the ones that give out hope and kindness and make the world a better place by simply making others happy. But how could I have known all that, at such a young age?

I couldn't. I had no one there to tell me how it actually was and I lacked the experience to learn it myself. So when I went into the great big world as a child one day, I went looking for a monster, one I could slash down and destroy, ready to be faced with recognition and gratefulness when I came home.

And I found nothing. There were no villains I could wipe out, unless you count the older kid pretending to be a teenager who laughed at me while I searched, the kid who, if I remember correctly, I wasn't even brave enough to talk back to. My whole life was meaningless.

If I could tell the story my way, I'd end it there. After agreeing that my mission was a failure, I went to find some friends and, like a normal child, played and chased to my heart's content, until I was older and understood who the real villains in this world are. If only that happened... I wonder how different my life would have been.

Instead, sub-consciously I knew that if I couldn't find any villains, I'd make them. Suddenly the girl I had been skipping with turned into an ungrateful monster who didn't want to be my friend. The boy who I found rocks with became a thief who stole anything I had given him. And my best friend grew into a liar who was only close to me so they could take my place and rule over my land. None of it was real, but it felt real to me. I had become the villain, the monster, a deceitful devil who hurt anyone that got close to me, yet in my eyes, I was the glorious hero saving these silly fools from demons so strong that only I could comprehend them. I didn't understand why I was being punished, rather than praised.

It took me a long time to figure out what had really happened when I was young. The rest of my childhood was spent in isolation as I became depressed by the knowledge that I saw the world, myself, and others in a different way to everyone else. After a while, I knew no one would understand what it was truly like for me when I hurt all those people, so I changed my way of living and spent day after day researching and exploring what life was really like. I'm still learning, even now, but I have so much more control over my actions than I used to because I have so much more information.

The truth of who I was, of who I am, will never leave me though. It stays with me, even when I get told by some that I was young and it wasn't my fault, I know that the hurt I caused so many people can't just be easily forgiven – not by myself or them. My childhood will always be marked by being a villain, but I don't have to be defined by it. I know now that I can only do what I believe is right, and whether that makes me a hero or a villain is up to you.