(Network) awake from blood-thick dreams

[hooliganstatus]

I'm seeing a lot of people apologizing for what they did while we were in the city.

What if what you suddenly feel guilty about is older than that? If no one is here to apologize to?

Comments

[ezra_of_lothal]

Shifts in perspective are hard. I guess the question is if this shift and the feelings that come along with it, is one you want to hold onto to.

[hooliganstatus]

I liked who I was, there. The life I had. ... I don't think I was ever so content in my real life. So I would think that means it is something I want to hold on to. If it means I can have that, in some way. But both lives are so different from how things truly are here, in Temba.

It's difficult. Complicated.

[ezra_of_lothal]

Trying to figure out if you can use the experience to be happier here and now sounds like a good reason to want to hold onto it to me.

I keep using the word complicated about the whole thing, too.

[hooliganstatus]

We had whole other lives. All these memories that made us who we are now, what we've done, what we mean to do. But those other versions of us - they didn't have that. They simply were. Nothing to carry, just ... itinerant wanderers with nothing to weigh them down. We are because we were. Not because we want to be. Some things can't be set down.

[it's the sort of thing she and Trevor probably could have argued over for days, until they sounded like pretentious nonsense to anyone's ears but their own]

[ezra_of_lothal]

A lot of us has smaller purposes, at least. School, friends, worrying about my family. Worrying about my family for less life and death reasons.

[hooliganstatus]

Exactly: smaller burdens. Easier ones. So now that we've known both, we have to decide which to lay down. Or if we can carry them all... even if some of them might be the same.

The friends, though. Those would be nice to keep.

[ezra_of_lothal]

I've done the only worrying about me and being alone.

With friends comes burdens, sometimes big ones, but I prefer it to the other way.

[hooliganstatus]

I'm starting to agree with you now that I'm here. It was harder back home. Monicans don't usually last very long in my line of work. Hard to keep friends.

[ezra_of_lothal]

Can I ask what Monicans and your line of work were?