163 - One Hundred Sixty Three

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Except, if I were dead, how does that explain Harry? I obviously have some…guilt over what I did that I think would factor into my brain making up a weird purgatory of no people and mysterious, possibly all-knowing beeps on the radio that feel like they’re taunting me more than they’re helping me. But, even if I didn’t spend my life thinking there was an afterlife, I could see my subconscious deciding that the best way to process what was happening was to justify my death somehow through creating a punishment. 

Because, let’s be honest, if I’m dead, I know how. I know why. What I did—what I was trying to do in this case, in this case—that failed and I didn’t make it out and deep down I decide that “hey, this is probably for the best, because here’s what would happen if you did succeed, do you really want to live like that? But even if all of that was true...I don't know that my brain could resist giving me something I did want. Someone I want. 

Harry seems real to me. Annoyingly so. Real and exactly who she’s always been to me. No substantial change, despite everything we’ve been through. And I’m not sure I’d punish myself that much. Maybe I just don’t want to believe I would.

So if not dead…then what? We’re back to square one, which is me as the stone, setting a ripple around the world that destroyed nearly everything. 

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I’m not sure I should be so cavalier about this stuff. Talking about my own death, my own final gasping breaths of life. But ever since finding Leann, there’s a sense of unreality that I can’t get over. I’m sure there’s a real name for it, something a psychiatrist would immediately be able to identify, but I never did see a shrink back in the world. Because I mostly didn’t have to deal with shit like this. 

But I’m outside my body. Outside everything. And I want to figure out what this all means, find the truth, the answers that I’ve been wanting for so long and also….it feels almost inconsequential now. Like nothing I uncover or grow to understand will actually change anything. 

I’ll still be alone in the world. I’ll still have done what I did. Harry will still have betrayed me. And I’ll still be in—

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It’s not like learning certain things changed anything. Knowledge can’t kill love.  

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