Lost Too Much 【REDONE】 ║ Daryl/OC or Shane/OC

Chapter 22: Everyone's saved except for me.

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(DAY 347) I haven't had anything to write about that necessarily needed to be put in the journal, okay? By this point, I'm basically taking wild guesses at the day. Again, it's around 347, might be a couple off, but it's close, alright? Don't yell at me.

The less we've had to do, the more I've been able to think about how much I miss Andrea, Merle, and Shane. It's been roughly a full year now since I've seen Merle (including the two weeks before DAY 001 that I was in PA). It used to be a constant cycle of me missing the Dixons when I was bored at Woodbury, but now that I had Daryl and had met all these people and lost them soon after, I almost missed Shane more than I had missed Merle. But now... Now I miss Merle three times as much as I used to.

Lori is about six months pregnant now. While she's growing bigger, the rest of us are getting unhealthily skinny. Well, a good few of the men already had a little fat on them, so the majority of us are still manageably okay. Beth, me, and Carol, we're a bit of a different story. Whenever we find food, people offer theirs to Lori first since she's eating for two, then a couple of the guys try to pass extra food off to one of us tinier girls. Typically, Daryl comes to me with his. He goes out hunting for squirrel and rabbit a lot, and he recently started bringing me with him to teach me how to hunt better. He, Merle, and Clark had taught me a couple years ago, but I hadn't needed to hunt at any point, so I was basically learning all over again. He jokingly said I was a natural, though.

Well, I guess we aren't super skinny looking. we're all underfed, for sure, but we haven't gone full days without eating at least a little. It's clearly not enough for keeping us strong, some days literally only providing us handfuls of Cheerios, but we're still alive. That's all I can ask for, really.

We're packing up to keep searching. We still haven't found a solid safe place to stay, clearly. But, I have to go. I can hear Daryl starting his motorcycle already.

Signing out,
Cory Jenner
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After finishing my little speech that I found nearly pointless, the members around the arena started swarming in around us. All I heard was congratulatory words and got the occasional hug from people I didn't even know the names of, hearing often that they were 'glad I was back'. The only thing I could really keep in mind was that none of these people even knew who I was. They were just talking to me like they knew what I went through... like they believed this town needed me despite the fact that they had striven perfectly fine without me.

It was all bullshit. They weren't survivors. They were hiding behind these walls, and while the walls and homes and the false sense of safety may have been a good thing, it was stupid. This place was bound to go down eventually, and that would just leave these people to die. The majority of them had no clue how to survive beyond the walls. I felt pity for them, the same way they all felt pity for me. They all thought I had gone through some rough times out alone, but they had no idea what was really out there.

Seeing that my group had taken off, I was already trying to figure out what my next step was. I knew I needed to put on an act. I needed to pretend I was still Corynn August, even if there wasn't a single part of her that remained in me. Corynn August was quiet, reserved, fragile, opinionated but self-kept from fear. She stayed out of things and wept to whoever was nearest when she felt trouble. She knew what she was doing, but she didn't like for people to know it. She didn't want people to rely on her. Cory Jenner was nothing like that. I was nothing like that anymore. I still enjoyed being alone over all things, but I wasn't fragile anymore. I was apparently crazy now, and at this point, I was starting to believe it myself. I was still opinionated, but now, I didn't give a shit who heard what I thought. I cried to myself instead of others. The last thing I wanted was for people to see me cry. Maybe I needed to stop. I needed to stop feeling pity for myself. If I wanted people to stop treating me like thin glass, I needed to stop treating myself that way. As much as I got through, I wasn't going to shatter under a single touch.