TM prompt 136. That which does not kill us only makes us stronger.
What does not kill us only makes us stronger.
I wish this were true, I do with all my heart. Because I’m one of the survivors of these trials, one of the four of us who managed to live through it all. Well, it’s five, really, but Van Helsing doesn’t seem to Count, given the way he wandered off to find new people to aid, new unlikely cases to interfere in. So it was just the four of us left, scars beginning to form as we sat around a table and tried to make idle conversation.
We all bear both the visible and invisible scars of our experiences. You can see it in Arthur’s eyes, the sadness the pain that I think must have been there since h had to drive a stake through poor Lucy’s heart, and perhaps from even before, when that heart stopped beating.
John is rarely around, mostly retreating back to the asylum to immerse himself in the lives of others, in their sad tales, but when he is he doesn’t seem to be really here. It’s almost as if he has distanced himself to protect himself from our shared memories.
Jonathan bears perhaps the most obvious mark of all we’ve gone through; his prematurely grey hair. Who knows if shock or fear did that to him, but I love him for it nevertheless. Sometimes when he lies asleep in bed beside me, I run my fingers through his hair. The texture of it hasn’t changed. He wasn’t scarred that deeply, or at least I hope note.
But none of us really knows what happened to him in the castle. I’ve read his journal from that time, he’s handed it to me, but I think some days that it wasn’t the whole story. But I never bring it up, because I know the memories would hurt him to talk about.
As for me…Yes, I’ve been changed. But I’m not stronger. I was strong enough before everything. Actually, I was strong enough when Lucy died, strong enough to take care of Jonathan and be certain to cry only when he was asleep. Strong enough to hold Arthur in my arms as he cried over his dead fiancée.
I wasn’t strong two months later.
I wasn’t strong when the Count pushed my face down on his chest and forced me to drink his blood. I wasn’t strong when I cried and cried for hours afterwards.
I tried to be strong in the next month, when I let myself be hypnotized twice a day, my mind completely connected with that of the man I hated more than anyone else in the world. I tried, I tried very hard.
But I think I failed, in the end. When I saw Quincey dying and the Count turning to dust, the strength that I had been attempting to hold onto slipped away.
And I’m weak now. Nearly every night in my dreams I relive the night when the Count made it so that he had complete power over me. Sometimes the place or the sequence of events is different, but it’s always similar to what actually happened that night.
And when I wake up, in a cold sweat, I know that it hasn’t all made me stronger, and that I’ll never be as strong as I was before it happened.
I wish this were true, I do with all my heart. Because I’m one of the survivors of these trials, one of the four of us who managed to live through it all. Well, it’s five, really, but Van Helsing doesn’t seem to Count, given the way he wandered off to find new people to aid, new unlikely cases to interfere in. So it was just the four of us left, scars beginning to form as we sat around a table and tried to make idle conversation.
We all bear both the visible and invisible scars of our experiences. You can see it in Arthur’s eyes, the sadness the pain that I think must have been there since h had to drive a stake through poor Lucy’s heart, and perhaps from even before, when that heart stopped beating.
John is rarely around, mostly retreating back to the asylum to immerse himself in the lives of others, in their sad tales, but when he is he doesn’t seem to be really here. It’s almost as if he has distanced himself to protect himself from our shared memories.
Jonathan bears perhaps the most obvious mark of all we’ve gone through; his prematurely grey hair. Who knows if shock or fear did that to him, but I love him for it nevertheless. Sometimes when he lies asleep in bed beside me, I run my fingers through his hair. The texture of it hasn’t changed. He wasn’t scarred that deeply, or at least I hope note.
But none of us really knows what happened to him in the castle. I’ve read his journal from that time, he’s handed it to me, but I think some days that it wasn’t the whole story. But I never bring it up, because I know the memories would hurt him to talk about.
As for me…Yes, I’ve been changed. But I’m not stronger. I was strong enough before everything. Actually, I was strong enough when Lucy died, strong enough to take care of Jonathan and be certain to cry only when he was asleep. Strong enough to hold Arthur in my arms as he cried over his dead fiancée.
I wasn’t strong two months later.
I wasn’t strong when the Count pushed my face down on his chest and forced me to drink his blood. I wasn’t strong when I cried and cried for hours afterwards.
I tried to be strong in the next month, when I let myself be hypnotized twice a day, my mind completely connected with that of the man I hated more than anyone else in the world. I tried, I tried very hard.
But I think I failed, in the end. When I saw Quincey dying and the Count turning to dust, the strength that I had been attempting to hold onto slipped away.
And I’m weak now. Nearly every night in my dreams I relive the night when the Count made it so that he had complete power over me. Sometimes the place or the sequence of events is different, but it’s always similar to what actually happened that night.
And when I wake up, in a cold sweat, I know that it hasn’t all made me stronger, and that I’ll never be as strong as I was before it happened.