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Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go. Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness.
a swimmer’s build.
Omgosh, a swimmer!? Eek
My parents were concerned.”
They were CONCERNED?! That's IT??
Not heartbroken, frantic, desperate.
Exactly what I'm saying!!
Alex is alive.
Wait what??
Running is a mental sport, more than anything else. You’re only as good as your training, and your training is only as good as your thinking.
We all need mantras, I guess—stories we tell ourselves to keep us going.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures: he leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul: he leads me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .
If you want something, if you take it for your own, you’ll always be taking it from someone else. That’s a rule too. And something must die so that others can live.”
That is what hatred is. It will feed you and at the same time turn you to rot.
Comma
I didn’t realize then what a privilege that was: to be bored with your best friend; to have time to waste.
The tunnels may be long, and twisted, and dark; but you are supposed to go through them.
I wonder if this is how people always get close: They heal each other’s wounds; they repair the broken skin.
“There’s a place for everything and everyone, you know. That is the mistake they make above. They think that only certain people have a place. Only certain kinds of people belong. The rest is waste. But even waste must have a place. Otherwise it will clog and clot, and rot and fester.”
It occurs to me, then, that people themselves are full of tunnels: winding, dark spaces and caverns; impossible to know all the places inside of them. Impossible even to imagine.
We can never understand. We can only try, fumbling our way through the tunneled places, reaching for light.
Because I do want. I’m not even sure what, exactly, but the want is there, just like the hate and anger were there before. But this is not a tower. It is an endless, tunneling pit; it drives deep, and opens a hole inside me.
loose I
Comma
Anger is useful only to a certain point. After that, it becomes rage, and rage will make you careless.
Stupid how the mind will try to distract itself.
5996. The faded green number tattooed on the woman who rescued me from Salvage, the woman with the mask. My mother.
Called it!!
Alex.
I FLIPPING CALLED IT!!!! Knew he wouldn't be killed off so easily.
