Chapter Twenty. I can’t sleep. The day keeps replaying in my head, refusing to let me rest

I can’t sleep. The day keeps replaying in my head, refusing to let me rest. My mind circles around something I can’t quite understand, yet I know is important. And so, like a dream from which you have just awoken, I keep trying to grasp the meaning, only to find it slipping through my fingers.

I don’t know why I told Duncan about Pennsylvania. I have kept it close for so long. It has been more than three months since I escaped Pittsburgh, but today it feels as horrifyingly real as if it were yesterday. But maybe it’s like a dam pushed to its limits by a swollen, raging river. Eventually, it just has to break, no matter how soundly it’s constructed.

Something broke in me upon learning that Asheville, my home, is no more. I have spent months spinning lie upon lie, telling myself I knew they were dead while pretending I thought they were alive, when the truth was infinitely more complicated.

Over and over again as I made my way toward home, I tried to convince myself that hope was irrelevant, that deep down I already knew my family was dead, and I was simply on a fool’s errand to find an answer I already had. And that was okay with me. The lie kept me going. But I knew once I reached Asheville and saw for myself what I already knew to be true, then I could finally stop. Whether I killed myself or simply stopped living would be of no consequence. Turns out, that’s only what I thought I knew. The ultimate, frightening, and unspeakable truth beneath the web of lies I constructed was that somewhere deep down I had hoped. I had believed that somehow, someway, they were still alive and waiting for me. If I hadn’t, then I would have just let myself die in that field in Pennsylvania.

I thought when the end came, when I finally faced the reality that my family was gone and there really was nothing left, I would be relieved, it would somehow be comforting to know my journey was done and I would have to fight no longer. I would be able to rest at last. But now, facing the reality of their deaths, I feel no such things. I feel only anguish. And grief. And guilt.

I have failed my family. I have wasted my survival, bought and paid for by the lives of others. The nearly two months of torture in Pennsylvania were for nothing. The last three months crawling and scavenging my way home were for nothing. The hope that sustained me through it all, that kept me alive and forced me forward even when I didn’t consciously know it existed, has been for nothing. Even worse, the shattering of that hope has torn a gaping hole in my heart with the force of its destruction.

I thought I had already lost everything, that no more pain could be inflicted upon me. I was wrong.

If I had only been faster, stronger, smarter, more, I could have made it to Asheville before those murderers had slaughtered what was left of my town. Instead, I paused. I lost sight of my goal. I allowed myself to be subdued by this place, these people. I allowed myself to dream again, whether I knew it or not, and that had cost me everything.

It would be simpler if I just felt like dying. I certainly want the pain to end, the grief, the guilt, the shame, all of it. Everything I have lived for these past months is gone, and even though to continue in this world means having to live through the pain I feel in every cell and synapse, every ounce of blood and bone, and even though I just want it all to be over, for some reason I cannot reconcile dying. Despite myself, and despite the guilt, the last few weeks on the farm have snuck through my defenses and shown me that maybe, just maybe, there is something left worth living for after all.

Now I am on a precipice, caught in the hairsbreadth between falling and stepping back, and I don’t know which way I want it all to go.

And yet, it seems that some part of me has already made a choice. Call it my subconscious, call it whatever is left of my soul, but I opened myself to Dunk despite my tangled mind. I took a step back from the ledge before I even consciously recognized I was standing on it, and while it unnerves me, it also feels remarkably like peace. A peace I don’t deserve yet crave just the same.

The thought of peace naturally conjures up an image of Kate. I have not spoken to her since that night in the barn. I want nothing more than to wrap myself in her arms and lose myself in her gentle care, and yet I can’t. I do not deserve such respite. I do not deserve anything but the weight of the guilt that is pressing down upon me.

My guilt burns into anger, and I do nothing to prevent the fire from raging. My guilt demands punishment. My failure demands justice. My selfishness demands that my life serve as penance. And my anger demands that I deny myself anything resembling happiness.

I have to keep living so I can properly pay for my sins. I have to pay. I need to pay. And in that moment I know my decision is made. I will begin again, here on Burninghead Farm, and spend the rest of my miserable life making amends. And I will start tomorrow.

Дата добавления: 2015-10-31