TM Topic: Not Alone (Alone?).
It was a strange moment for me when I realised I was alone. I almost didn't recognise it. When you're a twin, an identical twin, you barely have the chance to discover a taste of it. From before you are born there is someone else there who shares not only your parents but also your face. As a kid you love it, the attention is endless and the joke of fooling your teachers never wears thin. Then you get older and you start to resent it when they call you Julia, you resent being understood as a unit instead of a person. But you can't imagine them not being there, the concept of being alone is something you will never understand.
Then you get a call one morning and the very thing you could never understand is now your life.
When I met Daniel Holtz, I was, for the first time in my life, completely alone. Julia was dead and the family we had shared had died with her. Maybe it could have been rebuilt, who knows, but I wasn't interested in building anything. I wasn't interested in much. I hunted and I fought and I buried myself in the world I'd fallen into. And, it's only now looking back that I realise I was waiting, not for the chance to avenge my sister, but for my opportunity to join her. It took years to work that much out.
Then, I met Holtz and things did change. I was still fighting, hunting, but now I was building as well. We built an army together. It was a good army. A collection of all the casualties, all the destroyed lives I could find. They were alone and I brought them together to be something important. Sometimes I wonder what happened to those boys, where they took all their anger and pain when they no longer had a leader. All that anger and pain that they used to fight our battles, and all my anger and pain that I used to convince them my battles were their own. I don't regret it, whatever else we did, we fought a good fight and we didn't compromise. We did our job and I'm not apologising.
And Daniel and I shared a life for a time. We built a dream of something better, the idea of a family, we'd both had a family once and I think we both knew that nothing could compare to what had been, but we were willing to share in being a poor substitute. Not the most romantic of arrangements, but even at my best I was never an overly romantic girl. Besides, we all have our moments, I remember thinking one night while I watched him sleep that for the first time since Julia had died that I wasn't alone.
Looking back, which I try not to do too often, I realise how wrong I was. Together we were alone, we were as alone as we'd ever been. But while we were together that was all right, it was bearable and sometimes it was even good.
It wasn't that in his company I could hide from the fact that I was alone, but rather it was that in his company I didn't have to make excuses for the fact. There was no shame in it, there was no fear of it, it was simply life - or what is left of life when everything you once believed to be true has been stripped away.
Justine Cooper
AtS
484 Words
Then you get a call one morning and the very thing you could never understand is now your life.
When I met Daniel Holtz, I was, for the first time in my life, completely alone. Julia was dead and the family we had shared had died with her. Maybe it could have been rebuilt, who knows, but I wasn't interested in building anything. I wasn't interested in much. I hunted and I fought and I buried myself in the world I'd fallen into. And, it's only now looking back that I realise I was waiting, not for the chance to avenge my sister, but for my opportunity to join her. It took years to work that much out.
Then, I met Holtz and things did change. I was still fighting, hunting, but now I was building as well. We built an army together. It was a good army. A collection of all the casualties, all the destroyed lives I could find. They were alone and I brought them together to be something important. Sometimes I wonder what happened to those boys, where they took all their anger and pain when they no longer had a leader. All that anger and pain that they used to fight our battles, and all my anger and pain that I used to convince them my battles were their own. I don't regret it, whatever else we did, we fought a good fight and we didn't compromise. We did our job and I'm not apologising.
And Daniel and I shared a life for a time. We built a dream of something better, the idea of a family, we'd both had a family once and I think we both knew that nothing could compare to what had been, but we were willing to share in being a poor substitute. Not the most romantic of arrangements, but even at my best I was never an overly romantic girl. Besides, we all have our moments, I remember thinking one night while I watched him sleep that for the first time since Julia had died that I wasn't alone.
Looking back, which I try not to do too often, I realise how wrong I was. Together we were alone, we were as alone as we'd ever been. But while we were together that was all right, it was bearable and sometimes it was even good.
It wasn't that in his company I could hide from the fact that I was alone, but rather it was that in his company I didn't have to make excuses for the fact. There was no shame in it, there was no fear of it, it was simply life - or what is left of life when everything you once believed to be true has been stripped away.
Justine Cooper
AtS
484 Words