Wednesday 9 May 2012

The Beginning And The End

I read somewhere, a long time ago, and I'm not sure it wasn't in a comedy or a children's book so I may be lending this sentiment more gravitas than it was meant, that when someone is deeply, truly, mortally afraid

hopelessly afraid

they become immediately aware of just how far they are from the place they were born. And I say I think it was a comedic book because I remember it surprising me with how much the sentiment resonated with me within the context.

I was born in St. Michael's Hospital in Bristol, and for the last year I have felt every step I've taken from that place. I have been driven from my home. I've seen my friends slaughtered. I've been taken apart. I've witnessed horrors on a scale and depth I certainly hope you cannot imagine. I have wept and bled and screamed and quaked and ached. And though I look for refuge, I look for a way out, I suspect I shall never find it.

We tried, my friends and I. We found a town, settled down. Hundreds died. I was maimed.

We found new friends. Both led psychos right to us.

And now it's just me and Natalie. Natalie, who I trusted and really genuinely cared about. Natalie, who never thought I noticed the look in her eyes whenever she saw my stretched out, maimed arm. Natalie, who sometimes goes days without talking to me, in that passive, non-statement kind of way that genuinely shows that she doesn't have anything to say. She's driving right now - I can't drive since I had my arm taken from me. We're going to meet up with an old friend of hers in Vancouver in about a week. Another runner, named Kari. We're not sure, but she might be crazy. We hear she did something pretty bad to some famous runner. Hoping she's gotten her shit together since then. Hoping she has some ideas about what to do next.

We have to have something to do next. We stop moving and we're dead.

So we keep moving and every step takes us further and further from the place we were born.

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