Ch 3: Ballista (Dear Aria, I Love Myself)

[Spoken: Lenval Brown, Vylet Pony]
Warm tears disappear at once into disheveled shrouds of faded eyeshadow. Then, slither down your cheeks, and into your mouth.​
Fragrances of bitter salt permeate your laboured breaths. You sense, distantly, the gentle embrace of your pegasus companion.​
What do I do man? What do I do, I’ve been trying so hard to just get over Dub.​
What am I missing? I don't understand why this is so hard...
Love is a pain. An endeavour. Temporary.​
But love is necessary, and inevitable.​
The self is permutated by it. Thus, it is necessary to wield it shrewdly
I just wanna love, I don’t know what this feeling is, like, my heart aches. What do I do with it? I'm such a bitch...
Understand this, and this above all other things.​
Before you can truly love anyone else. Before you can fall in love with the world itself. You must love yourself first.​
How the fuck do I love myself if I’m so awful?
Your conscious experience is filtered through your brain, and your brain alone.​
To dare and ask these questions to yourself indicates a primal desire to be better, and to heal.​
Submerged beneath cynicism and irony, your heart lusts for the ordinary and the sensory.​
The prickle of the grass beneath your hooves. A distant chatter on a safe day.​
Stifling a giggle with a friend, in delight of the absurd.​
The thrill of the trickshot. The thrill of the game.​
Everything that you experience is because you have chosen to get up again in service to that will.​
When you are all that you have, endeavour to be something that you love. Then, love yourself.​
Nothing else matters. There is absolutely no other way to live. And, you must live.​
Cause it ends up hurting everyone around me when I'm so mean to myself, and I don't need to be.​
And it's like, I live in my own world. So I have to love myself because—
Nothing truly matters until you decide that it does.​
And baby, does it feel good to love yourself.​
You must only allow yourself that freedom.​
Because, my own mind creates the world. It’s all about the game because I make the rules.​
Yes. And, it has always been this way.​
And to love myself, I don't have to win.​
I don't have to be perfect, I just have to keep going.​
I have to make new rules.​
And I must keep changing.​