Self-control is a leash I keep chewing through. It is a fortress made of wet sand, collapsing the moment I lean against it. There are days when I believe in discipline, in measured restraint, in the noble architecture of a well-ordered life. Then there are days when I watch myself unravel with something between amusement and horror, as if I were both the reckless protagonist and the regretful narrator of my own undoing.
Byron would understand. He, that half-demonic, half-divine embodiment of appetite, lived as though restraint were an insult to the human condition. “I am so changeable,” he wrote, “being everything by turns and nothing long.” He devoured pleasure and let consequence snap at his heels. Self-denial was a game he refused to play, a cage he rattled with laughter. He is my foil — the specter of indulgence I wrestle with, the brilliant ruin I could become if I let myself slip.
But there is another side to it. To resist is to assert will over chaos, to refuse the easy ecstasies that dissolve into regret. To escape the Byron in me is to chase something harder, sharper, something forged in difficulty rather than surrendered to desire. It is choosing silence over a sharp remark, patience over impulsivity, discipline over surrender. It is saying no when every cell in my body is screaming yes. It is suffering now for the sake of something better, something stronger.
And yet, I wonder — does too much self-control risk making me a shadow of myself? There is a fire in recklessness, a poetry in giving in, that discipline can sometimes smother. Byron’s ghost lingers, reminding me that an unchecked life burns bright, even if it burns out. But I am not Byron. I refuse to be. I will not let indulgence dictate my story. The leash tightens. The fortress holds.
