Beacon 23

by Hugh Howey

Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name.

It’s like a human body at age thirty-five, when not a single original cell is left. All that remains are the memories—the one damn thing we wish we could amputate.

First you raise the kids, and then you raise a toast.

I’m the asshole. I’m the guy who thinks he’s uniquely miserable, who thinks all the world’s woes are his, who sees the pure in everyone else and the dilapidated within. Only I have suffered. Only I know pain. How do you share what you think no one else can hold? Why do we all do this to ourselves and each other? Why can’t we just fucking cry like men?

Crying isn’t simply about opening the floodgates to some private trauma and letting it out—crying is just as much about letting those around you know you’re hurting. Our tears are trying to serve a purpose, but we rarely let them.

Do we have to hurt the ones we love to keep them close?

This is what we fight. Not death. We fight life.