illicit | five hargreeves - EDITING

forty three

forty three: lost in translation

Anthony realized a long time ago that he felt too much, too hard, too fast, which so often only left him broken in the end of it all. His feelings often got the best of him, and he hated the cruel advantage that they had always held our his head ever since he was just a kid. When he was a kid and he would be the only one on the playground that would still cry when he would and scrape his knee, when he would cry at home whenever his parents would fight again, when he would look at himself in the mirror wishing that he could be someone, or even anyone, else.

His negative emotions were always the one at the forefront of his life, often taking away from anything positive he had, which wasn't much for the majority of his time. Anthony's mother would call him a crybaby all the time once he reached the age of eight, telling him that 'it was time to grow up' and that the world would only see him as weak if he continued to act the way he did.

At school the other kids would laugh at him when he messed up, and curse at him any other time, because after all he was the 'fag' of his class, and who wouldn't be repulsed by that? It was cruel, but he learned early on that kids are cruel; they're not taught any different by their parents who are just as cruel as them, and they'll never change and eventually have their kids who will perhaps be even more cruel than they were. It's an endless cycle.

'It's time to grow up' Anthony supposed in a way he never truly did grow up, because he still felt the same way he did when he was fifteen. He had always felt as if he was stuck at that period of his life, and being back inside his past body was definitely not helping his case right now.

He still felt terribly lost and confused in his life, and it scared him, because he definitely thought that by twenty-five he would have his shit together at least some bit. In a weird way, Anthony really missed the Commission. He missed the stability of it all, and he missed having a place that he belonged to. He knew he shouldn't, and he hated that he did.

Anthony hated a lot of things about himself, and if you asked him to count the things he did like about himself, he could probably count it all on only one of his hands. He hated the way he looked first of all, and ever since he was a teenager he would spend just hours looking at his reflection and wishing he could be anyone else. He hated it even more now than ever, because the face that looked back at him in the mirror just brought back every memory that he had so desperately tried to bury down as far as he could.

He felt too much, the smallest thing could cause him to breakdown and bring him right back to the places he didn't want to go. Anthony would still wake up almost every night, pacing his room as if he was a ghost, feeling as if the room was on fire but the smoke that choked him was invisible. He hated it, he hated how it made him feel, but also the way it made him look; pathetic, pitiful, shameful.

Anthony expressed his emotions a lot, but not with his own consent. His body betrayed him so often that it was so tiresome, because no matter how hard he tried to suppress his feelings they always showed up no matter what. His insecurities, his hopes, his fears, his sensitivities, everything were on display for basically the whole world to see.

But then Number Five was the complete opposite of him, because he had never been very good at expressing his emotions. Ever since he was a kid, when his mother would try to talk to him about his feelings and attempted to coax him to express to her how he felt, the same way his siblings did. She was supposed to be his main confide at the time, and even then he couldn't bring himself to tell her anything that was actually the truth.

His father had always taught him that feelings were simply just emotional barriers that will prevent you from reaching your potential. Any negative feelings were to be hidden and ignored, since they would only bring you down and cause pain to the people that were around you, and happiness was also to be pushed away because it could blind you from the actual point of life, and love was the worst of all, his father would always call it a simple distraction that would only ruin you in the end.