Arguing with myself and ooh! Shiny!

Every so often, I get this restless feeling.  It's like an itch, deep under my skin, down in my bones.  And I can stave it off, at least for a little while, and when it gets too bad I can usually work it out by doing some exploring, but that's not what the itch is about.  There's only a handful of times that I actually managed to satisfy the itch, giving in and scratching it as hard as I can.  But aside from those few times it's always there, building quietly, until it's singing under my skin.  So I explore, walk around campus, or up to wander the shops downtown, but it's never quite enough.  It's this need to fight, to pit my strength against someone else.  All muscle and movement and god, it makes me feel so alive when I can let that part of me out just a little.  Because I know what can happen if I don't.  And I don't like losing time to the beast inside myself, the more primal, possessive, protective version of myself.  Because she's fierce, and reckless, and dangerous, and she doesn't know when to stop.  And god, the first time she burst through scared me so much, because I lost control, and I barely stopped her from doing anything, and that was only because my friends stopped me.  And sometimes she prowls so close under the surface I don't feel like I can touch anyone without putting them in danger.  Because if she breaks free, I don't think I could stop her, when it takes so much to contain her, to satisfy her need to fight.

And it's getting harder and harder.  I can't hold her back nearly as well as I used to, and I'm lucky she seems to genuinely like some people, but she doesn't like my roommate.  And that worries me.  Because I'm having to go to classes, and do homework, and go to football games with marching band, and fight to keep her in line, and I'm exhausted.  And I'm worried that my roommate will say or do something, and I'll snap and yell and shout at her, because the beast thinks she's utterly selfish and inconsiderate.  And she liked my roomie from last semester.  She always makes the happy, contented cat like noises around my previous roomie.  And I don't get this bad when I spend a lot of time being extremely physically active, or if I'm around the people the beast likes a lot.  Which is kind of disconcerting.

And I think, if I had grown up just a little differently, I might have been something like a berserker.  Which is scary as fuck.