Veritas

I am out of the compound at the moment, clearing my head and getting my rediscovered rage under control. I left about an hour after my post yesterday, having had quite the revelatory conversation with my wife.

Jess was slipping me lithium to keep me calm.

I get it, I really do. I have an awful temper, especially when I see others being hurt for no reason. After almost five years together, she knows me and my reactions better than almost anyone. She told me when she saw that the stuff was driving me crazy, or at least pretty much eradicating my desire to do anything at all.

I didn't leave in a big dramatic scene or anything. Frankly, I was too stoned to do more than calmly explain that I was leaving for a day or two. I was coming off a fairly large dose, so I was actually feeling things, but it would have taken a big swarm of zombies to get my attention.

It's not that fact that she drugged me that infuriates me. It's that she didn't think it through. She didn't think of how dangerous it would be to me and to others to have my mind so dulled and numb. The consequences of her actions only became really clear to her when that attack happened, and I just sat at home.

I need time away. I need to be apart from the place I helped create for a bit, or it really will drive me crazy. We live in a world that seems impossible; a place where the wonders of human cooperation and ingenuity are given a bright contrast over the background of a landscape plagued by the living dead. But the truth is that the banalities of everyday life that pushed me down and made me indifferent to most things still exist. The idiocy of men and women with preconceived notions who judge others, causing strife and violence has followed us here.

The only place I felt truly secure was at home. The only person that had access to my deepest and most honest thoughts, my every secret and my total and uncompromising trust was my wife. I feel shredded inside that she felt that this was something she had to do. Part of me is proud of her pragmatism, and part of me is thrilled that I am not actually going crazy.

But for now at least, I am out here among the ruins of society. I am still in town, but for a few days at least I will be wandering around, exploring more deeply than I have had time to do since all of this began. I will be keeping in touch with the compound, since I am not running away. I just need space to reorient.

Onward.