I was Nikies the Byzantine. Or was it Nickies? I don't quite remember. Somehow, sometime, it got mixed up. Nowadays I can't even remember how it all happened. Was it because of Responsibility? Or was it Oblivion? Or did I invent these after the fact - convenient stories to frame what I had become in a context that removed the finer, more embarrassing details of how I got here?
Does it even matter? For a while, "The Byzantine" was sufficient on its own anyway.
But it illustrates my point perfectly. Nickies was not quite The Byzantine was not quite Nikies is not quite [me]. But they were, before I existed.
Fate had bestowed upon me extraordinary abilities. I could, if I so choose, trespass through time, and meet my past or future self. But I never did so, and I suspect even if I gain those powers back, I never will. My past self . . . naive, hopelessly engrossed in the fictional, but eternally ambitious and tenacious in trivial matters. How impossible it was for him to achieve those things he desired most. He did not even know what he did not know. Stuck in his own playground, he could observe reality, but he could never hope to reach it.
The only thought more terrifying than confronting the reality of my former naivete is to speak instead with my future self and find that relative to him, I am just the same.
But perhaps it is that terror which has held me back for so long. For eons, I lived as something apart, and I reveled in it. I saw myself at the apex of my peers, unconquerable. Oh, I had an ambition immeasurable. At the topmost level, I never had any doubt. Only one place suited me in the natural order. A mere mundane person-among-many I was not.
Now I know that this particular view was predicated on a lie. It was a false arrogance, directly purely outwards. When things were on the line, there was no harsher doubter of my own ability than myself. Underneath all that bravado was someone not willing to accept the responsibilities of real life. To do so meant risking a loss - and I was supposed to be someone who never loses.
What's more: we live in a social world. I soon found that those same abilities which I had treasured above all else were more-or-less to blame for my failures to achieve what I most desired; or at least that was how I saw it.
You who are closest to me may not know this to be true, for it is with you and you alone which I held on to the trappings of that other person, that naive boy that I was born out of. So despite what you may think of me, somewhere along the way those same attributes began to fade. Willingly or not, I was losing them. I was becoming something closer to the thing which my past self hated most.
Do not mistake my reflection for resentment, though. I suppose, in hindsight, this 'loss' was more like a 'trade.' I did indeed lose much, but in return I gained something which can only be described as wisdom. For the first time in untold years, I have finally reached Reality, at a cost.
That person, who once was, is now dead. Look all over Creation, you will not find him. He was, and now I am.
But this does not mean I should forget all that I have inherited. Yes, I carry his sins. His mistakes have left an indelible mark on my heart. Nikies is dead, but his hopes and dreams rest on [my] shoulders. I carry his will in [me]. His soul is [my] soul.
And now on this precipice of a new era I have caught a glimpse of something over the horizon: a premonition. In a way, I have already been my future self.
He terrifies me.
I know what I am to become. Then, I am already a subsection of myself. All my life I have vied for growth, have struggled to overcome, but never once did I imagine I would actually become that Allthing myself.
What I know for certain is: I will never lose what I now have. Nobody can take it from me. But I must have the resolve to be who I was, who I am, and who I am going to be. I'm going to attain that which I lost. I had to lose it in order to get it back – this is often the case. And behold, something new!
Reach Heaven - through violence if necessary.
Written in the waning hours of his 22nd period,
With love,
[Nikies]