Crestfallen ↬ Carl Grimes (old version)

A B D I T O R Y

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE; ABDITORY

❝ This is why it hurts the way it hurts.

You have too many words in your head. There are too many ways to describe the way you feel. You will never feel the luxury of a dull ache.

You must suffer through the intricacy of feeling too much.❞

❝It wasn't very hard to imagine myself from an outsiders perspective either, backing away from the small crowd almost as if the faith alive inside of them were some sort of hideous disease and I was afraid of catching. ❞

➳

IF IT WERE UP TO ME, I WOULDN'T HAVE THE CHANCE TO BE AFRAID IN THIS NEW WORLD. If it were up to me, life wouldn't have the advantage, never being able to look us in the eye and dare speak our names. There would never be a moment for villains to rise. Only heroes. And finally, there wouldn't be any sort of cannibalistic psychopaths plaguing the already infested earth, luring survivors in with a false sense of security and pulling their every weakness right out from underneath their feet.

You and I are thinking the same thing now, right? How stupidly, stubbornly, undeniably naïve I must be to put my mind on wild fantasies such as those at a time like this. It didn't matter how I wanted the world to be or what shouldn't be happening, it only mattered that we were actually in a dangerous and life-threatening situation that may or may not include those cannibalistic psychopaths I mentioned earlier. It was almost as if my brain would rather choose to be naïve than to break apart in the shadow of fear. It wasn't smart, but it sure as hell didn't hurt anyone but myself in the process of doing it, so what would be the reason for me to stop acting upon such things? Especially if said things gave me an excuse to be the outsider in certain circumstances.

After constant thinking about old journies and conflicts that I have been forced to entertain myself with in this new world, such as killing and supply runs, I have come to the conclusion that certain fibers of life and thoughts are able to replace the hope lost in my chest. Not fully, but just enough for me to continue living without much of a struggle on the humanity side of the bargain. Life was the type of struggle I couldn't let myself deal with right now, but thoughts were easy enough to come by, as long as they were the right ones. No, not the ignorant and blatantly stupid delusions I had spinning around my brain, but rather the observations of actions that belonged to the people around me, their eyes alive with their own versions of hope. The blue eyed boy and his father, kneeling on the ground as the older man instructs in a quiet whisper, demonstrating the creation of a simple self-defense object. The red haired, well-built man towering over the man with the mullet and the skinny, yet pretty, woman in an almost protective manner. Daryl telling his story to anyone curious, explaining the little details and blowing them into a widespread of clues, trying to connect the dots of his own mystery. All of these little details were a part of one huge observation, for every single person in this small space was willing to get things done.

The things that they were working hard to achieve, even in this small enclosed space and our certain dilemma, astounded me to the point of a statue-like stillness, my back aching against the seeping cold of the wall as I watch them work from the shadows. The way they worked, separate yet as one whole, was an amazing type of cliché. The style of it was contagious, hard to ignore and even harder to not join in. But one step was all it took for me to feel the crushing weight of anxiety, for I was the foreigner among these people, so what was the point of making a big show of myself? So instead, I stay clinging to the wall as if it were some sort of life support, my eyes watching and waiting for some sort of cue from a familiar face that it was alright to intertwine my own life with these people's. But of course, the cue will never come, and none of the unknown's would welcome me into their tightly knit family without some sort of okay from their headstrong leader, who was, of course, a bit busy at the moment, as most of them should be and how I have poorly chosen not to be. It wasn't very hard to imagine myself from an outsider's perspective either, backing away from the small crowd almost as if the faith alive inside of them were some sort of hideous disease and I was afraid of catching it.