Tired
Percy slipped into his warmed dressing gown and slippers, then moved his aching bones to an old settee, and slumped into is welcoming arms. The settee like the rest of his flat had seen better days. When he first moved at the age of 19 he hadn't cared, as long as he was away, away from everything. This small flat in London, had seemed ideal, within reach of his work and family, but with space and air. And to be honest he hadn't noticed having spent the majority of life surrounded by the decay of poverty.
At this thought he allowed a quiet sigh to slip from his chapped lips. It still amazed him how other peoples perception of his life and him were so serial and blind. They, his bosses, colleagues past school mates, all though of his childhood as a cheerful chatting noisily around the breakfast table enjoying the 'family life' but like most things, he almost wished the dream was true rather than his reality.
A tear slipped unnoticed down his pale cheek. He rarely cried and when he did he never acknowledged it, he didn't cry, he had no time to cry. As such no one knew the pain that mounted in his heart from incidents that haunted his young past. Times that remained captured in his memory forever. But things were never easy and it felt to him that everyone else in his life had forgotten why he was the perfect prefect bighead Percy the all believed him to be. Yet another tear glistened below his glasses. Glasses he didn't even need.
There was SO much they all didn't know, or refused to see. Sometimes the urge came to scream at them.
"This person you see, its not me. Don't you remember the boy I was, the child who smiled to everyone. Didn't you see the changes that occurred, I was just six. Don't you know since then I've never been me." But he knew he couldn't, they wouldn't understand, or if they did it would be to painful for his parents to question and again like the original time they would forget and leave him alone with his memories. And he would again pretend for them, because it was easy that way.
It was with these thoughts that Percy realized the truth of the matter. As with anyone who pretends to long, the persona eats and destroys the truth until even if the fake front is shaken of, there's noting behind, eaten away over the years. He was fake, just a pretend. He really had lost himself
He cuddled into his settee and pulled his legs to his chest, flopping his head on the big arms he finally acknowledged that he was tired, that he knew no way out.
No way out. The words struck him like a slap on the face. No way out. No escape. He had hoped for long that someone would reach him, help him, know him and pull him out. No one had. He had hoped, the change of address and company, would give him space to find himself, it hadn't.