Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Inner Peace

It's a very strange thing to know that the outside world is still such a violent place right now, yet here things are fairly calm. To be honest it's safer in Haven than at any time I can remember, and the outer defenses seem to be doing their job. Not many zombies at all inside the defensive measures. Just strays, really.

Last night I went through the blog, skipping around through posts and looking at the change over time. It's striking how you don't notice the change as it happens because you're part of it, but reading through all those old posts, hauling out so many memories sharp enough to draw blood, was eye-opening. When I first started writing this thing, it was about getting ready. About surviving what was coming. Then The Fall happened faster than any of us could have guessed, and I started writing my experiences.

I read a post from the end of January in 2011 to K, the one about Jack dying in my arms. K is from North Jackson, of course, so he obviously knew about Jack's death. I just wanted to read it out loud because that particular piece of writing was hard for me, as were a lot of others from those early days and months and years.

I'm thirty years old, and I've been living in a world destroyed by zombies for three years now. I've cataloged moments large and small, some in only the most general terms and some in excruciating detail.

I see now that since my time as a (mostly) non-combatant, since the mental break that was, thankfully, not as bad as it could have been, I've changed. This blog has changed with me, taken a larger focus on the things going on around the world. I don't know if that's for better or worse, but the truth is that since I'm mostly sitting in an office and not out there with everyone else, my life has become sort of boring. I sit down some days to type, and it strikes me that you all know who I am, how my life is. It has grown almost impossible for me to make a distinction between what matters about myself or not.

So I write about the war, the UAS, the larger state of things. Because that's easy. It's what people want to read about because it will affect them. Yeah, I try to keep the hotter heads in check because I'm one of them myself, but this blog has moved on so far from what it was as a few sentences typed in haste. It began with survival.

We've grown so far past that basic concept, and so have I.

This post is sort of like an episode of Seinfeld (apologies to future generations who don't understand that reference, if there are future generations) in that it doesn't have a particular thrust or point. I just wanted to lay it all out there, my observations on the evolution I've noticed in the blog and in myself (the two being inextricably linked) and my thoughts on why those changes have happened.

I read so many posts from that first year, and I can't help but think of how damn cute it was that I was so horrified by so many things. I had no idea then what terrible was.

I read back through those posts because I remember feeling so deeply, so wide, and longed for that again even if it were only the bad reactions. I used to get this deep sense of dread when big things happened, and for the life of me I can't pinpoint when that reaction faded away.

I'd love to know, because I didn't feel it at all yesterday when word came in the UAS has mobilized against us. They're coming at the Union in force.

3 comments:

  1. Wow. Reflections can strengthen or destoy us (as individuals). It sounds as though you personally have been strengthened. The calm before the storm can be a very scary place to be. How will each of us handle it? How will I handle it? I hope to be strong, creating something loving and happy for my boys. They are the future generations (even though they won't get Seinfeld!!) The final line of your post sent chills down my spine. In the midst of everything, I love life and still believe (maybe foolishly) in the good in people.

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  2. The UAS will fail. They have to.

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  3. I would love nothing more than to send troops your way, but we're kinda tied up at the moment. Seems that when word got down the chain of command on the UAS front, the troops facing us were told to reengage us. Fighting's been strong since yesterday. I'll write you when I can to let you know what's going on.

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