Repression as Power

I’ve lived my whole life being told that control is strength, but my inner beast tells me otherwise. It wants freedom. It gnaws and rips from the inside, trying to get loose and find the other side. 

They say a man is measured not by what he does, but by what he resists. I heard that lesson so often it became marrow in my bones.

So I learned to repress.

I held my tongue when I wanted to shout. I smiled when I wanted to sneer. I folded my hands neatly in my lap when I wanted to grip, to pull, to claim. I was taught to swallow my hungers, to hide them behind civility, to pretend they were never there at all.

What no one told me is that repression doesn’t kill desire. It feeds it. It sharpens it. Every “no” I forced into my throat made the “yes” grow louder inside my skull.

And now? Now, repression is not weakness. It is my power.

You think predators always lunge. You believe they are wild, untamed, frantic. But you’re wrong. The most dangerous predators are patient. They watch. They wait. They repress the urge to strike until the moment is perfect.

That’s me.

I can sit in a room, silent, listening to others chatter their nervous chatter, and they’ll never know I’m dissecting them with my eyes. I can smile politely across a dinner table while my mind crawls over every angle, every breath, every flicker in their gaze.

And when the time comes—when the mask slips, when their guard drops—I am already there. Ready. Precise. Ruthless.

My repression makes me sharper than all of them.

There’s a thrill in denial that you can’t imagine. To want something desperately and not take it—that is strength. To sit inches away from someone you could destroy with a whisper and keep your mouth shut—that is power.

Sandra never understood this. She gives in too easily, always chasing the next hunger. Samantha sees it, though. She knows the discipline of silence, the exquisite tension of restraint.

I deny myself not because I can’t indulge, but because indulgence is too simple. Too obvious. Power comes from holding back. From knowing you could, but don’t. Not yet.

Every time I say no to myself, I grow stronger. Every time I wait, the anticipation coils tighter inside me. And when I finally release it—when I choose to break my silence—the effect is devastating.

Politeness is the easiest mask. I can charm anyone. They mistake my manners for innocence, my quietness for humility. They don’t realise that civility is my camouflage.

Do you know what it feels like to sit across from someone who believes you are harmless, while you’re already planning the moment their world collapses? It’s intoxicating. They smile at me, relaxed, disarmed, while I repress the urge to smirk.

Repression lets me wear civility like a cloak. And beneath it, I sharpen knives.

They say repression starves desire, but the opposite is true. Denied long enough, desire mutates. It becomes sharper, more dangerous. It feeds itself on the very hunger that is withheld.

Sandra’s coy smiles, her reckless games—they’re children’s tricks. I see through them. I don’t need to chase like she does. I let desire simmer, boil, reduce itself until it becomes something potent, something lethal.

That is my secret: repression refines me.

What I love most is watching others fail where I succeed. They can’t hold back. They tremble, they confess, they give in to temptation. And when they do, I’m there to watch them unravel, one polite excuse at a time.

I don’t need to force them. They undo themselves. All I have to do is wait, to repress my own hand, my own voice, until they collapse into me.

And then they call it fate, or love, or weakness. I call it victory.

The loudest man in the room is always the weakest. The one who boasts, who flails, who rushes—he reveals everything. The quiet one, the repressed one, the man who smiles while saying nothing—he is the one you should fear.

I’ve learned to let silence speak for me. My restraint makes others nervous. They wonder what I’m hiding. They imagine it must be terrible, dangerous, unbearable. They’re right.

That’s the beauty of repression. It makes them invent horrors worse than anything I could show them. My silence becomes their nightmare.

You’ll see me in that book, in the pages of SEETHINGS III. Mitchell Felding, the polite one, the restrained one. But don’t mistake restraint for weakness. Every smile, every silence, every withheld word is a blade kept sharp.

SEETHINGS III exposes this truth: repression isn’t about denial—it’s about dominance. Those who spend themselves quickly lose their power. Those who hold back, who repress, who wait—those are the ones who control everything.

And I? I control everything.

-A