Addicted to the Sugar Quill High

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.

- Lord Byron

It has something to do with being abandoned as a child.

I mean, my parents died. They left. It probably isn't abandonment in the strictest sense – I'm pretty sure they didn't plan the car crash – but the end result is the same.

Harry Potter, orphan.

Hermione would say I'm disrespecting their memories but I'm not. I can barely remember them. The biggest impression their death has left me is this: longing mixed with greater resentment for forcing me to live the kind of life I do.

It's not their fault.

At the same time, it is.

Hermione would say I'm ungrateful.

I say I'm simply bitter.

But I'm never one to analyze my own psyche. It twists things up and makes you self-absorbed. I've a vague notion of who I am, but beyond that I don't want to know. The one thing I'm certain of myself is my unhealthy interest with broken things. It can be a person, an object, an event in history, it doesn't matter.

My friends roll their eyes at this side of me which they call my 'hero complex.' It's actually not as sweet as that. It's merely like attracting like.

And it's a dangerous hobby.

Because you're thinking that something that is already broken can't possibly break even more.

You are very wrong.

-

It makes me wonder about my mum, Lily.

I live in a fairly small town where everyone knows everyone else. It's the sort of place where 'minding your own business' has never been a popular concept. I have plenty of people tell me that my mum and dad were the nicest people, helpful, sincere, in love, etc.

But I also have Aunt Petunia to compare her to.

My aunt isn't a complicated woman. She lives for recognition and therefore thinks little of herself. Outwardly, though, Aunt Petunia seems like your typical, gossipy housewife. Put in the fact that she's hungry for any sort of news where she can boost her own self-esteem, such as Mrs. Next-Door-Across having a drug addicted son or Mrs. Next-Door-To-The-Right's husband has been fired for embezzlement, and it takes a darker tone.

And she absolutely loathes me.

I am the only son of the sister who you only read about in books: Lily was pretty, smart, and wonderful. She is the source of Aunt Petunia's insecurities, having grown up in my mum's shadow. And from the stories I've heard of their childhood, mum absolutely adored Aunt Petunia and tried to include her in everything, even her romance with my dad (mum practically forced them to date despite dad's obvious adoration of her and her growing feelings for him; a rather demoralizing affair, I'm told). How can Aunt Petunia actively hate someone who loved her so? It adds an interesting dimension to their fractured relationship.

In the end, Aunt Petunia has finally found the way to express her repressed bitterness towards her sister in the form of the son she has left behind.

Aunt Petunia likes to think that she's better off having never taken care of me (and I say that last part in the loosest sense possible). The truth of the matter, one that we both know, is that she needs me to make her feel better about hating her sister. After all, she isn't spitting directly on my mum's grave, just the person tending it.

Bah, I'm awful at analogies.

But in a strange way, I'm grateful to my Aunt.

She's the reason why I don't see with rose-colored glasses. Or, no, I actually do. Only those glasses have cracks in them so I won't be fooled by the world.

It is a bit sad, though, for an eleven year old to think that.

Even sadder, when that eleven year old has turned out like this.

-

I once slept with my best friend, Ron.

We didn't share a meaningful night together, nor was/am I in love with him. It didn't shatter my world further or fix it in any way. It was merely sex in the purest form, helped along by a few bottles of beer. It didn't even have the decency to give me that 'holy fuck I'm attracted to blokes' revelation that every man experiences at least once in his life (and mostly ignores) because I don't discriminate when it comes to the people I sleep with. When you spend as much time observing people as I do, one of the first things you notice is your own reaction to them, whether sexually or not.

To Ron, however, it was a life-altering event.

He didn't fall in love with me or realize that he already was.

Instead, he saw Hermione in the way we've all known about since bloody forever.

He pursued Hermione with a single-mindedness that he only showed during footy. Hermione took offence at first but eventually let herself be caught.

Ron and I have never spoken about that night (after an awkward conversation that consisted of obscene hand gestures and manly pats on the shoulder) and I'm pretty sure Ron has blocked it from his memory.

I cherish that moment because I actually lost my virginity with no strings attached. I know a few people who would kill to have had that chance.

And I take full credit for their relationship, by the way.

-

I mentioned that I rarely scrutinize myself.

I lied.

Because I do like to compare my life with others, obtaining a perverse sense of gratification in the differences I find. It's strange how my pitiable existence can be preferable to, say, the life of Draco Malfoy.

I have no illusions, you see, while Malfoy seems to have built his reality out of them.

He's as broken as I, and only I see it. I'm not even sure if he's aware of it.

That is why I find him so fascinating.

-

TBC