Pyromantic

How you feel

Discontent.

That's how you felt.

Your stomach was in knots; your mind too aware, too awake. Nothing settled you, not even fire; it made you think back to why you were so deeply unraveled. You tried music, but nothing sounded right. You tried listening to some podcasts, but you couldn't focus on the words. You went down the list of things to distract you from your thoughts, but each failed you. Reading? You could not allow yourself to be engulfed like usually. TV? Nothing good was on.

You wanted to talk to Vunde, but it was much too late for her to be awake. Even if she was, it wouldn't be a good time to have the long, deep conversation you needed to have.

Your thoughts troubled you out of sleep, so you opted to sit in your living room with a cup of tea to calm you. It was the best thing you had for right now.

You sipped at your tea and tried to sort your thoughts, going through the same steps you used when in too deep.

"Okay, first, breathe," you said to yourself, taking a few long, deep breaths. "You're okay; you're perfectly fine," you assured yourself.

When things got bad, you had to talk yourself down from going too far over the edge. Often, this process ended in you being calm, and level headed. On some other occasions, you had started the process too late, leading to you getting much too emotional for your own good.

You thought back to when you were in high school, specifically to when you were really stressed. Your poor mother had woken up to you in the living room by the laundry, crying because you couldn't find any socks to wear. Back then, anything could set you off.

Now though, you had learned to restrain yourself, often hiding most emotions, keeping a neutral opinion to most things, especially with strangers. Only your closer friends could pull you out, making you become very expressive, showing that you weren't as neutral as some thought.

You laughed at a far off memory, one also from your high school days. Your mother throwing snide comments at your wardrobe, and how it didn't have to be as neutral as your personality. In her defense, you did wear a lot of greys and blacks then, mixing in some brighter colors every now and then. You had told Vunde about it later that day, to which she laughed at the accuracy.

Nowadays, though, you had begun to branch out more, both in personality and wardrobe. You still had a lot of neutrality in both, but had become more open around others. Nothing could prepare anyone for how you acted around your true friends, though. It was as if someone had entirely flipped the script on your character.

'However...' you thought, thinking to how the past year has been. Like the weather, you had grown colder to more people, stress making you more... expressive in a negative way when reaching a certain point. All of the pent up rage had led you to drive away quite a few people in your life, and to you burning that old farm house down...

However, you had noticed that you had begun to feel less stressed in the past two days, despite losing your job. You also noticed that you had started to go back to how you were before when around your two new friends. And then earlier today, with Vunde and them, you felt content and at peace.

"Huh," you paused your escalation into emotion to mull this over briefly. "I wonder why that is. Is it possibly that I have run out of anger, and am simmering down into the apathetic being I once was? Perhaps, I just feel more at ease around them, since they were so kind in the beginning," you paused your soliloquy to mull over one last thought on the matter. "Or, maybe, my heart knows more than my brain..."

You sipped at your tea, thoughtfully. You glanced at the clock.

4:13 AM.

"Ugh..." you had begun to feel a bit sleepy, and you had work tomorrow. " Fuck ," you had work tomorrow. With Grillby. Who you practically threw yourself onto. Your boss .