Him

He was always finding limits and stopping at them, afraid of what he'd do if he ignored them. Afraid of what would happen if he broke the rules. If he said no to being constantly beaten down by his own reluctance to push past where most have gone, to be the lonely distant point on the graph, kept separate from the group by forces stronger than himself. What would happen if he let those forces win? What would happen if he admitted that there were things stronger than him, things that he will never understand?

He liked the cozy little bubble he had filled for himself with memories of empty compliments thrown at him like a bone to a dog, even though he hated those compliments deep down, when he thought about them alone in his white-walled room with his guard let down. Why is "good" always good? Making people feel good is easy. Making them feel bad, truly, frighteningly bad is hard. When he wrote he had to find a weakness, widen a crack in the reader's foundation of trust in humanity on which their existence is built. All without knowing who would even read it. Without knowing what they're most afraid of or where they've been. Without even know if anybody would read it. This is how he lived his life.