The Savage Road: Journal of the She-Hulk

Contemplations of a Raging Spirit

What makes us who we are?

Is it our consciousness? How we think? How we act? How we feel?

Is it physical? What we look like, how pretty or athletic or stylish we end up being?

How about how others perceive us? What if that conflicts with our own state of mind or being?

Perhaps all of the above? Or none of it? What if you have two minds and two bodies fighting to exist?

Sorry for starting out so philosophical. I'm currently trapped in the recesses of my animalistic other half's brain. My body is no longer my body, and my consciousness is here, or not here. I couldn't tell you where it is, honestly.

I can tell you, however, that the She-Hulk isn't thinking about what it means to exist. She's wrecking the shit out of a traffic jam of cars right now. Crunching metal and human screams fill her ears, and her philosophy is smashing all the puny humans in her path. There's going to be a swath of destruction left in her wake, which is something I don't really want to focus on, so now you know why I'm pondering human existence.

Up until an hour ago, when an asshole hit me with his car running through a crosswalk, I had been pondering lunch. But in my typical Rebecca luck, I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Shrip, growl, rage, smash.

That said...I think I was happy to see the She-Hulk rip his puny ass out of that car and throw him into another car. I was in pain one moment, then soon that pain was gone, replaced with anger. The anger protected me, and I think both our minds took glee in dishing out retribution.

What does that make me? What if I told you I am more upset about bursting out of the cute outfit I had scavenged together than how many hospital bills that driver is going to have? I can spout my objections to every one of the She-Hulk's monstrous actions all day in this journal, but honestly I think she's in the right sometimes too. I didn't ask to be hit by a car. I didn't seek out trouble, trouble came to me. For all the grief she causes, she's also done me a lot of good getting me out of bad situations where I should've been hospitalized, or even dead. But on that note, would I even be in these ridiculous situations if I didn't have to live life as a runaway and hide the raging spirit that lives within me?

Which makes me think: What does the She-Hulk ponder when she's trapped in my subconscious? I feel her presence in there when I'm in my human body, and I know she's exerted some influence over me in the past, to which I return the favor when I can. But my green-skinned roommate has never struck me as the pondering type. Does she just seethe at me impatiently waiting for me to stub my toe so she can burst out and stomp around? Does she ever wonder how or why she came to exist?

Or here's the scariest part: Has she always existed? What if the accident didn't create her, but just gave her access to a physical form? Are we actually two separate beings, or just two halves of the same coin?

Eat your heart out, Socrates. You never had to contemplate this shit.