I AM A MONSTER IN A MAZE AND IN A WAY I'LL LIVE FOREVER

"I have accepted it

I am connected

My ugly head is like a mushroom on a tree of knotted muscle"

Minotaur Forgiving Knossos - Moonface

Asterion, The Minotaur (2022) - Paul Reid

"Sometimes the Minotaur doesn't sleep.

Sometimes the dreams are too much to face.

This happens most often after a trying day,

when the weight of his years and the weight of his differnce seems to rest fully on the wide plane between his horns,

to spread along the slope of his neck and across his muscled shoulders,

to press down on the weakest and most human part of him,

threatening to crush his legs."

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Chapter Eight - Steven Sherrill

The Minotaur has been a myth close to me since I was a child, I used to read over and over again. How could a beast so strong and so swift fall to a human? As I grew older, I empathized with the monster. He hadn't chosen this life. He born into circumstances far beyond his control. Of course that would twist him, who wouldn't succumb to the nature of a scared beast when contained in a prison, alone, meant to kill and eat others?

A year of my life was spent in isolation of my own volition while I was getting back on my feet after a harsh break-up, and I began to consider how the Minotaur would've broken free of the isolation. What pulled me out of mine? Community. Friendship. I was still lonely, to be sure, but it felt less like a burden when I was on the phone with my friends, I felt human. The Minotaur wasn't granted that. If he was, would he have not become the monster, but rather Astarion, son of Pasiphae? A year isolated from others and yet I came out on the other side with friends who supported me, who loved me. The Minotaur never had that chance.

I wonder who I would've become without my support system.

Theseus and the Minotaur (1861) - Edward Burne-Jones

"It's the Minotaur's oldest secret. probably the one thing no one has ever known about him. He wishes, sometimes more than anything else, that he could sing. Truly, freely, with rapture, sing."

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Chapter Eleven - Steven Sherrill

Minotaur Forgiving Theseus - Moonface

"It carries with it, through his monster's veins, the weighty, necessary, terrible stuff of human existence: fear, wonder, hope, wickedness, love. But in the Minotaur's world it is far easier to kill and devour seven virgins year after year, their rattling bones rising at his feet like a sea of cracked ice, than to accept tenderness and return it."

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Chapter Nine - Steven Sherrill

The Minotaur (1885) - George Frederic Watts

"There are a few things that he knows, these among them: that it is inevitable, even necessary, for a creature half man and half bull to walk the face of the earth; that in the numbing span of eternity even the most monstrous among us needs love; that the minutiae of life sometimes defers to folly; that even in the most tedious unending life there comes, occassionally, hope. One simply has to wait and be ready."

The Minotaur Takes a Cigarette Break, Chapter Twenty-Eight - Steven Sherrill

There have been periods of my life where all I crave is isolation. I can't stand being around others, being subjected to so much suffering. It's not that I see others as beneath me, quite the opposite; I feel as if I am unworthy for others. I am tumultuous, harsh, and sometimes unforgiving. How do I cope with these feelings when others need a person to speak to, and I'm all they can get? I am stuck in a maze of societal expectations, and I think I cannot cope.