45
The City has developed a morbid sense of humor in regards to death. War games where life is cheapened by death's impermanence, the ghosts... I want it to mean something. I also want to avoid being a ghost again. Selective solidity made using the computer difficult.
It was nice being invisible, though.
Apologies to anyone I spoke to on the day I made my last post. I don't think I was entirely myself... or if I was myself, I was a self I'm glad to have left in the past. There are some who don't believe we can change our fundamental beliefs or who we are, and I'm glad they're wrong.
The snowdrops I planted are already sprouting. Flowers seem to grow quickly here.
Private // Unhackable
I've had nothing if not time to think (even if, sometimes, I wonder if I shouldn't spend less time thinking), and my thoughts inevitably turn to death.
When I was sick, I wanted to be dead--truly dead, the way Richard is. The half-life that the City gives to corpses is unnatural, and it's difficult to go on with the knowledge that, at any second, I might leave the City and go back to nothing. I wanted that nothing immediately; I wanted to avoid fear and uncertainty. Now that I'm well, I'm not sure that that's what I want.
When Cassie arrested me--back at the bluff, after Richard died--I begged her for another chance. I begged. I wanted to start over, no murder, no guilt. A clean slate. Another chance to live. She told me that it doesn't work that way... that you get one life. What you do with that life is up to you, but there are no second chances. She wouldn't give me a second chance after I saved her life. She destroyed all hope for a chance when she had me tried as an adult rather than a juvenile.
She was wrong. I thought she was right, but she wasn't. This is that second chance.
I didn't see the City as another chance at first. It was a punishment... a well-deserved hell for a murderer who needed to be punished. That's how I saw it. Reading through my previous posts... it's incredible. It's incredible how much power those words she said had over me--how much power Richard still had over me. I believed them. I believed that there weren't second chances, and that Richard was the only one who could see me for who I am. I believed that everything would have been fine if I had met Lisa first, before Richard--that none of it would have happened, and I could have graduated from high school and...
And it wouldn't have worked out that way. I don't believe in fate, but I believe that what happened was inevitable. With or without Lisa, Richard and I would still have found each other. We would have murdered that woman, we would have been caught... he would have still called the cops and emptied his gun. He would have died, and I would have died. It was necessary for us to die.
I think death was the best thing to happen to either of us.
Richard wouldn't agree. He might have been content with the shallow life he was living, but eventually he would have realized what I know now--that neither of us belonged. Not as we were. We were wrong, maybe from birth, and we paid for our deformities.
I've paid my debt. I died once; now I deserve a second chance. Maybe Richard's getting a second chance, too; maybe there's something beyond the nothing that I experienced outside of the City, at least for him.
It makes less sense when I try to put it into words, but both of us are free now. We're free from our homes and our parents and a world that didn't understand. We're free from guilt, since we've both paid with our lives. Now we're free from each other. I hated it at first, but now... I don't think we helped each other. Symbiosis is not something humans should strive for.
It's Memorial Day at home. No one's going to leave flowers for me, but it's just as well. I only loved my family as much as they loved me. Richard... Richard's family probably threw hundreds of dollars away on flowers for their martyred little boy. They were convinced to the end that I had masterminded the entire murder, manipulating innocent, naive Richard into committing acts he would have never committed alone. In the end I think their lawyer was better than the one my mom hired because they cared. They needed to blame someone that wasn't their son.
What would Mr. and Mrs. Haywood think if they knew? If they had cared enough about Richard to know him when he was alive, would they have cared so much after he was dead? What would they say if they knew that each of us had been manipulating the other?
It was a game. Both of us lost because we didn't realize that it wasn't a game--it was life.
I don't miss Richard anymore. He was all I had then, and I think I was all he really had. I don't hate him, either. We were wrong, what we did was wrong, and now we're both free to right it.
I don't know what happened, but I feel like I lost part of me in the last couple of days. It wasn't any great loss--just the parts of me that I needed to lose. It's different from how I felt before I met Richard; it's not that deadened lack of emotion. I'm not as dead now as I used to be. Maybe I'm not as alive as I was when Richard and I were getting high or planning or drinking, but I'm...
What am I?
Content, maybe. I have a second chance. That chance could be taken away any second, but I have it now, and now is what matters. It's more of a chance than I ithought I had after Cassie arrested me. I have a job, and I kind of have a family. I'm not sure if I have a--but I don't know about Shilo. My judgment where emotions are concerned is fatally flawed. I've thought I loved people before, and I've been wrong.
Maybe I'll read this in a few months and wonder what I was thinking when I typed this.
We do change, after all.
It was nice being invisible, though.
Apologies to anyone I spoke to on the day I made my last post. I don't think I was entirely myself... or if I was myself, I was a self I'm glad to have left in the past. There are some who don't believe we can change our fundamental beliefs or who we are, and I'm glad they're wrong.
The snowdrops I planted are already sprouting. Flowers seem to grow quickly here.
Private // Unhackable
I've had nothing if not time to think (even if, sometimes, I wonder if I shouldn't spend less time thinking), and my thoughts inevitably turn to death.
When I was sick, I wanted to be dead--truly dead, the way Richard is. The half-life that the City gives to corpses is unnatural, and it's difficult to go on with the knowledge that, at any second, I might leave the City and go back to nothing. I wanted that nothing immediately; I wanted to avoid fear and uncertainty. Now that I'm well, I'm not sure that that's what I want.
When Cassie arrested me--back at the bluff, after Richard died--I begged her for another chance. I begged. I wanted to start over, no murder, no guilt. A clean slate. Another chance to live. She told me that it doesn't work that way... that you get one life. What you do with that life is up to you, but there are no second chances. She wouldn't give me a second chance after I saved her life. She destroyed all hope for a chance when she had me tried as an adult rather than a juvenile.
She was wrong. I thought she was right, but she wasn't. This is that second chance.
I didn't see the City as another chance at first. It was a punishment... a well-deserved hell for a murderer who needed to be punished. That's how I saw it. Reading through my previous posts... it's incredible. It's incredible how much power those words she said had over me--how much power Richard still had over me. I believed them. I believed that there weren't second chances, and that Richard was the only one who could see me for who I am. I believed that everything would have been fine if I had met Lisa first, before Richard--that none of it would have happened, and I could have graduated from high school and...
And it wouldn't have worked out that way. I don't believe in fate, but I believe that what happened was inevitable. With or without Lisa, Richard and I would still have found each other. We would have murdered that woman, we would have been caught... he would have still called the cops and emptied his gun. He would have died, and I would have died. It was necessary for us to die.
I think death was the best thing to happen to either of us.
Richard wouldn't agree. He might have been content with the shallow life he was living, but eventually he would have realized what I know now--that neither of us belonged. Not as we were. We were wrong, maybe from birth, and we paid for our deformities.
I've paid my debt. I died once; now I deserve a second chance. Maybe Richard's getting a second chance, too; maybe there's something beyond the nothing that I experienced outside of the City, at least for him.
It makes less sense when I try to put it into words, but both of us are free now. We're free from our homes and our parents and a world that didn't understand. We're free from guilt, since we've both paid with our lives. Now we're free from each other. I hated it at first, but now... I don't think we helped each other. Symbiosis is not something humans should strive for.
It's Memorial Day at home. No one's going to leave flowers for me, but it's just as well. I only loved my family as much as they loved me. Richard... Richard's family probably threw hundreds of dollars away on flowers for their martyred little boy. They were convinced to the end that I had masterminded the entire murder, manipulating innocent, naive Richard into committing acts he would have never committed alone. In the end I think their lawyer was better than the one my mom hired because they cared. They needed to blame someone that wasn't their son.
What would Mr. and Mrs. Haywood think if they knew? If they had cared enough about Richard to know him when he was alive, would they have cared so much after he was dead? What would they say if they knew that each of us had been manipulating the other?
It was a game. Both of us lost because we didn't realize that it wasn't a game--it was life.
I don't miss Richard anymore. He was all I had then, and I think I was all he really had. I don't hate him, either. We were wrong, what we did was wrong, and now we're both free to right it.
I don't know what happened, but I feel like I lost part of me in the last couple of days. It wasn't any great loss--just the parts of me that I needed to lose. It's different from how I felt before I met Richard; it's not that deadened lack of emotion. I'm not as dead now as I used to be. Maybe I'm not as alive as I was when Richard and I were getting high or planning or drinking, but I'm...
What am I?
Content, maybe. I have a second chance. That chance could be taken away any second, but I have it now, and now is what matters. It's more of a chance than I ithought I had after Cassie arrested me. I have a job, and I kind of have a family. I'm not sure if I have a--but I don't know about Shilo. My judgment where emotions are concerned is fatally flawed. I've thought I loved people before, and I've been wrong.
Maybe I'll read this in a few months and wonder what I was thinking when I typed this.
We do change, after all.