So Josh and
his wife have left Haven, as you know. The sun is shining, life is pretty decent, and yet I’ve been in kind of a funk since then.
You know the feeling you get when you move to a new area? It’s exciting, but you just feel down and
lost. Maybe it’s just me who gets like
that. Regardless, that’s where I’m at
today.
And don’t
get me wrong, Haven itself hasn’t actually changed. It’s just that Josh and his wife were the
first two people to accept me when I defected from the UAS. Others did as well like Will Price and the
hamburger couple (I’ve really got to learn their names, but they refuse to tell
me. They just keep telling me my food is
getting cold.) I guess it’s that Josh is
the voice of Haven and now he’s no longer here.
It’s weird and even though Haven hasn’t changed, it’s like it has. I feel like I’ve moved yet again.
I moved a
lot when I was younger and my time post-Fall has been spent as a
transient. I did spend a little time in
a survivor camp in Pittsburgh, but I was going through a lot while I was
there. The reality of The Fall had hit
me and I’d had to do things that I normally would have never done. I think we can all remember that time when we
first did something that, in The World That Was, would have been unthinkable
but in The World That Is, becomes necessary for survival. I was going through a ton of survivor’s
guilt, shame, and so on. So even when I
was at that camp, I was pretty standoffish.
I just did what they needed me to do.
A little light therapy and a lot of zombie hoard head-smashing. It took a while for me to get used to the
idea of belonging somewhere. That’s
about when the marauders rolled through and butchered everyone and those of us
lucky enough to escape scattered. There
are not words for how much I hate marauders.
I think I
mentioned way back in my first post how I just wandered after that and
eventually found the UAS and bought right in to the lie that The World That Was
and The World That Is could be reconciled.
I really tried to belong there, but it never seemed right. Part of the reason I originally spoke out in
favor of the UAS was because I wanted so badly to feel like I belonged. Really, Haven is the first time I’ve actually
let down my guard and allowed myself to settle somewhere. I’ve never had that before, even Pre-Fall I
was always expecting to have to move somewhere else eventually. Now I’m here and life shakes itself up. Kind of.
Not that I’m
mad at Josh or disappointed or anything.
It’s just weird to be reminded of what I always knew before. Everyone moves on. Some move, some die, but we’re all transient
to a degree. And I don’t mean that in a
nihilistic way. It’s just
realistic. We all move forward in
life. Even when we try to stand still,
inertia caries us inexorably forward.
Things change and we all adapt.
Josh has his new home and we all have to get used to our home again,
this time without the man we assumed would always be there. How, in this world of death and the ruins of
an extinct society, did we get the idea that we were all here permanently and
would never go away? We’re like kids once again, who
can’t comprehend the permanence of death. Like Big
Bird insisting that he would see Mr. Hooper tomorrow. You’d think we’d have learned that
lesson. Yet a guy leaving to make a new
life for himself still strikes us as strange.
Humanity is
really weird sometimes.
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