To Desire Nothingness

-Wujjawoo-

Nothing. Just nothing…

People call me bitter, and I have to agree with them. Sometimes I can hardly remember when I wasn't. I think I've always harboured that bitterness, that despair of what my life was, but at some stage I just gave in; allowed it to grow and overtake me.

Do I regret it? I'm not too sure. Sometimes I think that I've stopped caring all together, and life is easier that way – so much easier. Because life, and its meaning- well… When you take away all the frivolous nonsense that people create, cut away all of the useless mumbo-jumbo that's thrust in our faces day by day, life is just about survival. And at the end of the day it isn't even personal. As a human, our deepest, most primal desire is to ensure the survival of the human race – nothing more and nothing less. Some people give it a name- they call it Love, that foolish desire that some feel that prompts them to find a partner and have children.

But love is just another one of those fantasies, one of those illusions that have been created in an attempt to give life some kind of meaning. I see through it now, though. When I was young I was foolish. All I desired was to be loved, to not be lonely. But now…

Still Nothing.

I know what people say about me, what they whisper as I pass. I was great once, before I realised that greatness is a sham. People say that I've had a hard life, and tell their children that that's made me all the more courageous. A hard life? Yes. A loveless childhood would corrupt anyone eventually. Even the strongest people fail.

I tried everything to overcome those early years of my life. For a while, I thought I had succeeded. Hope imbued me with values, morals, and blinded me to the truth. I finally came to understand the true meaning of the phrase 'love is blind'.

At some stage, hope left me and all that I had was duty, because although I understood that life was only about survival, something still compelled me to go on. I'm harsh on people who insist on living in a dream world, but it's hypocritical because deep down I wish I had that luxury.

Doing my duty was hard. It made me all the more jaded and disillusioned with everything. I'd be lying if I said I didn't welcome the impartialness of not caring anymore. It was a relief to be on my own, to push everyone away, to not feel the burden of responsibility so much. The burden of responsibility for so many individuals was greater than the burden of responsibility for a society I didn't know, for people I didn't love.

And so people whisper that I'm a bitter, disenchanted man, who could have had so much in life yet turned it all away. They don't understand, though. My life has been so twisted, so complicated, that I just gave up trying. I never really got to have a childhood; didn't experience love or acceptance or fun, not until I went to school.

But there came the manipulations and the influences of a world that was much larger than I was ready for, but was forced into. At Hogwarts I first came to fully understand and feel the forces that were Dumbledore and Voldemort, though it was not the first time I had encountered them…

School went by all too quickly for my liking, and I was thrust into the vicious world that I had never really wanted to be involved in. That's when I really turned from everyone. I had never been so wholly and completely disappointed as I was at that time. The people who had tried to rescue me from myself during my latter years at school gave up then, I think, and instead employed their persuasions into urging me down the path that they saw for me.

There were so many different paths that they wanted me to take, as well. I felt torn, in my heart, my mind, and my soul. I was falling to pieces inside, and nobody could see. I never really appreciated the skills I had learned at shielding my mind until this point, and from then on it was as though I lived two separate lives. There was me, and then there was the façade that I presented to the world, the façade they expected to see.

An empty frame for an empty shell.

I would sit by myself late into the night, every night, unless duty called me elsewhere. I would drown my sorrows in any means possible, most often with a bottle of good Muggle whisky and a decent bout of self-pity. I considered backing out (of life, at one stage), but duty stayed my hand and held me fast. I remember one night when I was feeling particularly down. I think I was pretty well intoxicated at the time, and I decided to brew a bit of a potion. I was secure in the knowledge that it would be fatal, given the state I was in when I concocted it.

I laid back in my favourite chair and tipped the goblet back until the potion halted right on the rim. I sat like that for almost a minute before I realised that I couldn't do it, and then I threw the wretched thing away from me, giggling insanely.

It's been a bit of a tradition since then.

It's a tradition that stays the same, no matter how much the world changes, and it's a small comfort.

Sometimes I think about my life as though it's someone else's, and I analyse it. When you look at something like that it's easy to see the flaws, and I see lots of them. I hate everything that I've come to live for because nothing I live for has been chosen by me. I hate the people who are so happy and cheerful when it's their scheming and manipulations that have led me to where I am now. I hate them for what they believe in, and for their greed and desires and for their hopes and dreams. Because everything is about survival, and anything else just interferes, just confuses and complicates, and it's harder to deal with when things are like that.

I sometimes wonder how people could be so stupid as to worry about things so mundane as what day to go out, or how they could argue about simple things like what time to leave. Occasionally the thought strays across my mind that at leats Voldemort's got it partially right. He knows what he's on about. Purity of blood- survival of the purebloods. Because it's all about survival. I push the thought away, but it always comes back to me. I'll never give into it, though I'm not quite sure why. Perhaps because if I did it would nullify everything I've already destroyed my life for.

You only get one chance at life, and this is mine. It's been wasted, I feel. It angers me to see others throwing their lives away by choice, disgusts me that they could be so flippant about such a gift.

I often wonder what I did to deserve such misery to be bestowed upon me. I've always been upright and truthful (to an extent), and always done what people wanted of me. For all it's worth, though, I'd much rather prefer to have never encountered the things I have.

And so that is why I look into this mirror and I see nothing. I encountered it when I was younger, in that time when I still had hope, and I saw many things. But times have changed. I look into this mirror and see nothing, because my greatest desire is to never have existed at all.

oOoOo

A/N: Please review and tell me what you think! I love reviews – Wujjawoo