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┏━━━━━ CHAPTER THREE ━━━━━┓ ★゜・。。・゜゜・to be so lonely ──── Chicago Rhee
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❝ Keep on dreaming, don't stop breathing, fight those demons Sell your soul, not your whole self Oh, if they see it when you're sleeping, make them leave it And I can't even see if there's hope there anymore, so ❞ — afraid, the neighborhood
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WHEN WOULD I FINALLY TASTE A DROP OF MERCY FOR MY BATTERED SOUL? Life had steadily lost its pigment of excitement, the vibrant joys I once indulged myself with flickered away like a flame caught by the wind. What was it like to truly feel alive? To kiss the clouds in a moment of pure exhilaration, where the world danced around you in a haze of ecstasy. The once so tangible feeling of pure happiness became a distant dream, only in my fragile mind could I conjure a fuzzy recreation. What if everything I yearned for was six feet underground, or slumped against a tree a bullet embedded in their skull, their flesh rotting away from the bones that now protruded from their body? Where do I go from there? When is the right time to finally lay down my cards and admit defeat?
Although my life up until this point had been riddled with solitude, I never knew how to be alone. Not everyone knows that being alone is far different than pure loneliness. To be alone is a normal occurrence of life. We drive our cars alone, we eat alone, we perform in jobs alone. And whether or not someone is actively within our presence, they do not move through the same thoughts as us. No one can be in our head and theirs simultaneously and vice versa.
To be lonely is far different. Even in the presence of other human beings, there's a hollow emptiness that can't always be made sense of. It's a period I like to think of as autopilot. You know that you yearn for something, but don't know how to attain such a thing. It's like a word that floats on the tip of your tongue, mocking the fact that you grasp and grasp yet cannot distinguish what it is. To be lonely is single-handedly one of the most debilitating feelings a human being can endure. An endless cycle of questioning if you're just not worthy of one of our species' most welcoming feelings: stability.
Loneliness is not always chopped up to not connecting with others, sometimes it's you you're not connecting with. You exist within your body, but there are no anchors to tether you to yourself. And if you can't understand yourself how do you rely on others and trust that their hands will not send you adrift in space?
The one person I trusted more than myself was my brother. He, despite all our differences, provided that basic foundation of feeling like my legs would not dangle freely underneath me. When I did not know why I was sad and merely floating in a void, he reminded me there was always somewhere I could call my safe haven. While older siblings are usually the ones that provide all the rules of life, he has always been the more perceptive one. I wanted to be like him. When I had nowhere to go, when my path was unclear, I looked to him. Now I had no means of making sense of the world myself.
Surely, there had been times before he was born where I had a sense of my individuality. When did I forget that? When did my childhood self die off and disappear from the earth? Why had I let her go? Oh, to be a child again, where my heart did not bleed knowing the horrors of the world. The worst realization of all was understanding that the skin you bore did not carry the same light as it once had, or where the person you saw in the dirtied mirror was a stranger.
When had I started living for others before I lived for myself? I was never mad at the people I should've been: Fiona, Negan, the Saviors. They had no fears over what ties they severed and what ones they used for their benefit. Did I want to be like them?Shed my morals and my innocence just to survive in a world that did not want me? Which one of us had truly lost? Perhaps in attempting to clutch my humanity close to my chest I had become a fool. Humanity. What was the definition of it in a world that bathed in the blood spilled by the unlucky ones?
Had Glenn succumbed to the world? Had the picture I painted of him in the old world been covered over by a mess of paint? I feared knowing that answer just as much as I feared not knowing. And yet, I had no confidence in believing if he even made it out of the city of Atlanta. My heart constricted thinking about that possibility.
It was a twisted thing to say, but I knew that the chances of seeing my parents or sisters once more was highly unlikely. We all lived in different parts of the world, but it was Glenn and I that decided to stay together. To never see him again would truly solidify the fact that this world took lives selfishly and I was destined to be alone forever. I had no one else I knew and I no longer wanted to partake in a world where I was surrounded by strangers that would not hesitate to stab me in the back before I could mutter out a sound of protest.
To hold onto the hope that Glenn was somewhere out in this forsaken world would make this whole thing worth it. If I needed to get abandoned, physically hurt, and wander through the forest on limited fuel in order to reach my brother once more, then perhaps I would endure it all. If there was a chance that he was alive, even if his conditions weren't the best, then at least I'd have someone I knew to endure it with. I knew there was no reality in this universe where my brother turned against me and vice versa. He was the only one I could trust, unlike so many others.
My heavy eyelids demanded to be shut as stopped once more at the base of a tree. A little rest wouldn't hurt anyone. I was so tired. When was the last time I had slept? It was a miracle my body was still functioning in my half comatose state and lack of basic needs that allowed my survival. I wonder how far I was teetering on the edge of death. Would I plummet into the icy rivers below? If I was to die, here with Mother Nature as my only witness, then I hoped she'd take pity on me and grant me peace when I met my end. It was spending my last moments in agony that I was absolutely terrified of. I did not want to linger in this world as I transferred into lifelessness, the less I was aware of the better.
I planted the palms of my hands against the trunk of the tree, my forehead plopping against the rough exterior. I ignored the discomfort, focusing more on the desire to give my legs rest and fall to the ground. It was tempting. Giving in to my exhaustion was equally the most logical and idiotic idea within my head.
No, you have to keep going, I told myself. Just a little bit longer at least. I knew the dangers of wandering out in the open world when your own body was shutting down. Any little bit of shelter you could salvage was better than nothing. It was also important to find a place where you wouldn't get trapped in the case humanity decided to rain hellfire down upon you, ruin your day, and destroy what protection you had. I hated to admit it, but perhaps there was one important tip that I had remembered from my time at the Sanctuary.
My limbs were giving out on me. With shallow breaths, I put weight on my right foot and the top erupted with a dull pain. Shit. Grant me just one last bit of hope and let me find a safe place. With a determined grunt, I stumbled forward making sure to allow my foot as much cushioning as I could. I favored my left side, mentally convincing myself that walking normally was not an option. Perhaps the pain was in my head, a distraction I conjured for my lonely self. It didn't make sense, but nothing in this world had a lick of reason anyway.
So, what do you do then? How do you find reason in the unreasonable?
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