Found:
I'm going through the motions. I know I am. If anyone else has noticed, they've not commented on the matter, for which I am grateful. I've no will to explain why this is.
I laugh and smile and crack jokes, yet I cannot feel the levity. I pretend for all that I'm worth that nothing has changed. I lie to myself as surely as I do to them. But what do they know? How would they know any different anyway? Most of those I converse with now are naught but passing acquaintances, people who do not and never shall truly know me. Of those that do know me, they know only a little, only what I let them. It has always been my way, and always will be.
I've been spending my days in the Prancing Pony. And the evenings too. As well as the mornings. I go back to the house only to sleep, but never inside. I can't bring myself to lie within those walls, to rest within that bed. I can barely bring myself to enter at all, except for when it is strictly necessary and, even then, I don't linger for long.
It would be incorrect to say that I am happier elsewhere. My love for Bree has hardly strengthened, but at least in the tavern there is the chance that company will find me and I will be distracted for a time. Failing that, it is still a public place and thus I refuse to let my true feelings show. 'Tis nobody's business but mine, and so it shall stay.
It is safer, then, to say that my misery is easier to handle when I am not at the house. Easier to hide from.
Even in the comfort of the stable, with my dear Steel for reassurance, I find that my mind sometimes drifts toward putting an end to it. Joining him in oblivion. One look to my companion, and another to the silver ring upon my thumb, and I pause for long enough to dismiss the notion, at least until it arrives again.
I am trying and I will succeed eventually, but for now I am poor company.
