who are these skeletons with guns, taking aim?

we made ourselves a home out of our dreams
brought with us this love now bittersweet
maybe I could say now that I always thought of you
how you run to walk with me, your whole life through

What is it, old home week? Not only did I run into someone I haven't seen since my earliest days in Steelhead, but in trying to track down a picture for the last entry or so, I dug very far back into the archives for this very blog.

and I know we go deeper than skin, but what lies within
it's still deeper than we know

And while I didn't find an image suitable to use, I did find a veritable surplus of other images. Names and places I'd forgotten, people I still remember, people I wish I didn't. And now I'm asking yet again, what is it with me and demons? Is it just that prototypical 'bad boy' thing? Am I that plebian and afflicted? Mayhap so, because obviously I haven't learned a damned thing.

and for all this pantomime
you should see the state I'm in
I couldn't heal myself with time alone
I have you tattooed on my skin

Page after page, entry after entry. Face after face. Years between the self of then and the self of now, and I'm wondering how much I've actually grown in the interim, how far I've actually moved my now away from my then. I kept examining their images, as if searching these frozen bits of time misplaced would actually teach me anything new.

this house is full of stories we both told
these rooms, their very stage where they'd unfold
these walls, they whisper secrets and memories thereof
but this door no longer leads us to their love

And I kept wondering...well, no, not with everyone, the vampire princeling can go swallow toads for all of me, but...with some of the others, I kept feeling a touch or two of...I don't even know. Faded former emotion, not yet swept up and tossed away? Shreds of affection, long neglected, that somehow missed being recycled? Regret?

yeah, I know we go deeper than skin, but what lies within
is still deeper than we know

Regret. Is it regret? Is that really what I felt, looking at my distant past, and pondering? Do I regret...well, no, foolish question, I am built of regret, formed of it, I have so many regrets I could fill a lake and have regret left over to coat the shores. I know this. I've made a great many mistakes in my life, and not a small number have been mistakes that, once made, led to others in turn.

all I ever wanted was to hold you
what can I do now to make things new?
I ain't trying to write you into a song
'Cause you're too sacred and I would feel wrong

Perhaps it's not regret I'm feeling, looking at these faces. Perhaps it's that touch of melancholy about what might have been. Had things worked out, after all. Had I not tried to make a home in a sim that imploded before spiking all the trees and building skyscrapers. Or had I not thought I could rely on someone who never spoke in truths, only in the language of roleplay for all our interactions...before utterly disappearing from the grid. I don't even remember his name now to see if he's still on SL at this late date.

but when irony life holds,
I was finally ready to meet you half way
You turned and walked away...

Or had I not been thrown aside for an outfit...

But then, these were demons; perhaps they were only sent to bedevil me, not to join with my heart and stay by my side. Maybe it was never in the nature of any demonic creature to do that. And maybe that is that sense of regret I feel, that I ever let any demon close enough to believe.

Maybe that was the lesson I needed to learn in the first place. And in the aftermath, to stay away from anyone with haunted horns and a yearning for the dark side...

(Song lyrics adapted from Poets of the Fall's Skin.)