My life is cyclical.  My depression and hypomania come in waves and my acquaintances are subject to a revolving door of membership in my life.  For nearly three years now, I have been writing on the subjects of ASPD and psychopathy and I have spent countless hours communicating with others that are ASPD and/or psychopathic.  This entire time, I’ve been living a dual life as both sinner and saint.  Yes, I’ve matured over these past three years and as I approach my 31st birthday, I appear to be on a trajectory to improve my life further.  What I am unsure of is whether I can continue honoring my antisocial self while also projecting an image of love and compassion to those around me.  I am unsure whether the demon and the angel can live in coexistence.  I do know that the cycle has to be broken.  I must begin to form compassionate connections with those around me if I want to be anything but a perpetual loner, discarding all that dared to come to close.  I do know that I have to ease back, and with that in mind, have deactivated the ASPD-centric tumblr that I used to run.  What other changes await me?  I do not know.

I will never be without my demons.  I can try to resist their temptations and I can succeed on some level, but they will always be there, for that is my natural alignment.   That said, I believe there is more merit in learning to be part of the world than against the world.  As I near five years of continuous psychotherapy, I have learned how to form emotional bonds with a select few – even if those bonds were cut out prematurely.  I have learned how to turn on some form of empathy, no matter how confusing and painful the state may be.  I am more human than monster these days and I am encouraged by the rich color that I see before me.  But, my demons still nag.  A friend caught me in a foul mood and I discarded them, not even considering the years of friendship that we had before then.  I still envision shortcuts instead of paths blinded by light.  Each day is a struggle to continue the momentum toward becoming strictly prosocial and invested in those around me.  The demons know my name and my wants and dreams and they call to me to honor them once more.

These are strange times and only time will tell whether I end up enslaved by my latent state or free of the chains that have always imprisoned me.  I have nothing left to prove to myself regarding my antisocial proclivities.  I have everything to prove to myself regarding the bright future that I can forge if I can resist the call of sin.  I don’t know what will eventually happen.  I do know that I must fight tooth and nail those urges to be antisocial.  I want to be prosocial and I want to be invested in the lives of others, for this life can only be measured by those lives that we touch and that touch us.  I want to live in a world of color rather than greyscale.  And, I want this more than anything I’ve ever wanted before.  Will I stumble?  Yes.  Will I ever be free of my latent darkness?  No.  However, I still have free will and I am choosing to use that to refuse and resist the eternal void that calls my name every second of every day.