Red Eye

Part Twenty-One

Still nothing...

I thought once I'd ripped everything down, made myself vulnerable, they would have stormed through this dilapidated Starbucks and dragged me out kicking and screaming. But it's been a couple days now, and they still haven't come.

While I'm grateful to currently have all my limbs still attached, I can't let myself relax just yet. They could just be biding their time, hatching a plan. Or maybe they've moved on, found another town to lay waste to and I'm the only one left.

Maybe those silhouettes were just my mind playing tricks on me. The exhaustion and the grief melding together to give my brain something to distract itself with. Or maybe I'm just that desperate for company that I've been conjuring these shadowy figures to keep myself from feeling alone.

Maybe this is a sign for me to move on, to gather more supplies and seek a new place to hide out. And maybe along the way, I'll find another lone survivor like me and then...

All of these thoughts collide in my head and yet I still can't bring myself to move from the chair, can't bring myself to get up and walk, to take one step outside those doors. 

And maybe it's because of everything that's happened in the past, after what happened with my parents. Maybe I'm scared I'll make another mistake by leaving. Maybe I'm worried about feeling like another failure by turning my back on something I was too afraid to face head-on. But at this rate, with the world turning into a giant apocalyptic shit-show, I highly doubt anything worse can happen to me but...

Goddamnit... All these fucking maybes!

It's always been easier for me to talk myself out of doing something. I've never been a risk-taker, never been someone who just does something for the hell of it. It's easier for me to doubt everything and everyone, to doubt myself, to second-guess every decision. It's in my nature to convince myself that nothing will work out for by benefit, that the world is always out to get me. I've found that if you're always expecting things to go wrong and end in disappointment, there are only so few occasions that become pleasant surprises. Sometimes it's a blessing to be a pessimist at heart.

When I had tried to kill myself, as soon as that thought popped into my head, I immediately talked myself out of it. As much as I wanted to do it in that moment, as much I had convinced myself I was ready to do what I thought needed to be done... I told myself how easy it would be for me to fuck it all up. I told myself I wouldn't swallow enough pills, that I wouldn't cut myself deep enough, that I wouldn't pull the rope tight enough. I told myself how much of a hassle it would be to find the right time and place to do it. I told myself that if I couldn't finish my book, how the hell would I write a convincing suicide note. I told myself how my parents would hate me even more once they found and had to deal with my body. I told myself that my death would be more of an inconvenience for them than me continuing to exist. I told myself all the necessary things I needed to convince myself that staying alive would be worth it.

Even now, having the option to take matters into my own hands, I'm still trying to convince myself there's a reason to keep going though I'm still nowhere close to discovering that reason why. 

Is all of this some kind of twisted survivor's guilt?

I ran away from everything. I ran from a broken home instead of trying to fix things between me and my parents. I ran from a crowd of strangers being attacked instead of trying to help. I ran from the monster who wanted me dead instead of putting an end to his reign of terror. 

I'm always running away, finding an excuse to leave or give up. 

And I think that's always been my biggest weakness. 

I think, if I'm being really honest, the true reason behind my writer's block is that I'm afraid I won't achieve everything I've tried to accomplish. I've been chasing this dream for so long that I'm afraid what will happen once I wake up. I'm afraid everything I've stored in my mind will loose all meaning once I write it down. I'm afraid once everything flows out of me and is put on paper and I have it sitting in front of me, that it won't exceed the expectations I've been building up for it. I'm afraid that it won't be as good as I thought it would be, that it won't be as ground-breaking as I hoped it would become. I'm afraid that once I do finish my book, someone else will have already created something better than what I was able to make. I'm afraid that after all that hard work and dedication, I will just be a lesser version of someone else's masterpiece. 

I'm terrified that the only thing I have to offer this world, the only piece of myself that I am truly proud of, won't be enough. I'm terrified that, like myself, it's better left unfinished and forgotten.