It seems an old and empty story
Someone suggested that to alleviate my feeling of stasis, I write.

A few weeks ago, in a moment of harsh self-disgust, I deleted every entry in this journal. Years of writing in minutes gone. I hardly miss them and I hardly regret doing what I did.

It has always been a habit of mine to systematically burn or discard everything personal every now and then.

I've never felt it to be a form of purification. While I watch pictures and papers burn to feathery ashes, I feel nothing at all. It's not absolution, but there's no sadness or longing.

I don't like to throw things in to the trash. Too many of my things have been removed from the trash and kept by a certain organization. Some things, I want no lasting record of. What I want them to have, I purposefully leave. Now and again, in the past when it was safer to do so, I would go and visit my old things. It was like touring an old museum of my life, viewing remnants that hold such sweet memories. I told the men and women stories, which they recorded with quick pens on paper because I would not allow them to use recording devices; they knew I could detect such devices slipped in no matter how well hidden on their bodies and they had more respect than to try to fool me.

Many of my most prized things were lost to time and to cataclysmic event outside of my power to control. Some things were destroyed in fire as Rome burned, some in another fire as my entire beloved world in Venice fell apart around me, and some buried in ice.

What I keep now has no value. They are just things to amuse myself with, but never important enough that I would suffer to lose them.

In person and in thing.

Last night, with his usual arrogance and inflated sense of importance, Santino exclaimed with what could have only been a mixture of amusement, contempt and pleasure that he had destroyed more of me than he thought. I find this absolutely maddening, of course, that he could take credit for something he had nothing to do with. It has always been my own doing, not his.

His words were strikingly ignorant coming from a man who wanted nothing more than to be me, to have my life. He was the one who abandoned his convictions and his pathetic coven to live in luxury. He was the one who boasted of killing me to the one woman whom he could never have as if that would win her over. He was the one who wanted to be to Armand what I was and ultimately failed.

He has never understood me or anything about me. If he had, he wouldn't have boasted these things to Pandora. When she told me he had done this, I felt the strangest urge to laugh at his stupidity.

And need I not forget his appeals for forgiveness. He followed Pandora to rescue me in order to make amends. When Akasha knocked me to the floor, he was the first up to help me to my feet. I did not accept his weak attempts at friendliness then, of course. Perhaps that is why he has ceased to extend them. Then again, perhaps he also knew that I was his only way of survival. Only I could have spoken to Akasha for them, appealed for all of them. He could have been using me.

But, I don't care.

Yet, I keep these things to myself. What is the point of throwing them out? It's childish and below me. I accept his every insult because my pride is such that he wounds me none. All he has is words, after all. He pretends to be fearless, yet I remember the terrified look on his face as he sat before Pandora, Armand and me. Every time he scoffs and insults, I remember that face and know him for the farce he plays and for the coward that he is in his soul. I remember the sight of his dirty black robes pulling up over his pale legs as he tumbled down the steps of the Hagia Sophia. I comfort myself with the thought that I will one night see that look on his face again.

Why have I ranted on, thus?

Because lately my anger is unsustainable. My own convictions have betrayed and abandoned me.

I replace long lasting happiness with fleeting pleasure.

My potential for happiness is so far away and I don't know where she is. I've tried to replace her with lackluster success.

I remember Estelle in black lace pressed against my body. I remember her shivering against my body. I remember the taste of her blood.

When I remember these things, I think to myself, "I was wrong to her." I was trying to replace someone that is irreplaceable. I was seeking to find something so the opposite of what I wanted that I would no longer desire it. Estelle was beautiful, exciting, and I did care for her as much as a man could whose heart is already entirely owned by another.

I think she enjoyed the secrecy of what went on the most. After all, that was how it had begun. Left alone after a Halloween meeting, we ended up in each other's arms and promised to keep it between the two of us. I don't know what she had to lose, only what I did. Our public words were thereafter spoken with innuendo. We kept things cordial, yet there was always the hint of something else underneath. She spoke to me as an acquaintance in public, yet alone together she purred seductions against my ear.

When I would close my eyes and see the face of another, I had the decency to feel a twinge of guilt.

Now I find myself doing the same. She asks me for more than I can give, but mortal women are demanding creatures. This time, I have no shame. It's another thing destroyed.

Marius de Romanus
ante diem XVIII Kalends Iulius MMDCCLX