Dear reader,

You must wonder what has happened to me, you saw my downspiral, my downfall. It is so hard to explain, and there is too much to ever be able to synthesize in the human language. This is my final message, barring my last post, because if I survive, I’ll cancel this and you’ll never read it. If I succeed? Then this is why this electronic letter is now meeting your eyes.

It is fairly quite obvious what I am to do, what I’m waiting to go through with, despite the fact that moments ago I heard from one of my friends—one of the ones I mentioned before. He wants me home, but what is home? That wretched place was never home, no matter how much I try to trick myself. No matter how much I wished for them to reach out, being met with it head on brought about memories. So many swirling and disasterous imagery, and it’s too much. All of it overwhelms me, and I don’t wish to see it any longer.

I want to apologize to Patty, my sweet wife, my beloved. My heart was never yours, and I know we both knew that. You, my gal, deserve better than me. My final wish for you is to just move on, be happy, you have so much of your life ahead of you.

I- I can’t apologize to my friends, no matter how much I want to. They know why I am here, in this position, a razor to my neck and a half-hearted letter being typed on my phone for a blog that nobody cares about. I just want them to know that no matter how scared I was; they were always my family.

Tell them I’ll see them on the other side.

I want to extend an apology to any who further investigates this blog, confused by the puzzle that became my mind. I wish that I could tell you this was fake, that every detail that littered my brain was some make up story, I just hate to break it to you: this is real. This was real. I am real.

I won’t be very soon, but I was real.

As real as the person reading this, deciding on whether to read on or leave, as real as the few people who saw my posts beforehand, to the friends that I now have loved and lost, for a second time.

My final wish: forgive me. I was never meant to be, we were never meant to be, I am just giving fate its rightful ends.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story: but I don’t deserve it.

Glowing Regards,

Stanley

I want to apologize, to my wife, to my friends, because I- I can’t keep doing this. It has become so unbearable, this existence of pain. I’ve never felt so exhausted in my life, and I wish it could be over.

I have to protect them, selfish as it may be, but I can’t just- they need to be there, but I am nothing.

This has to be done, if I write back I failed.

It has just gotten worse, I apologize for my absence.

Leshanot

I forgot a lot of things, and I didn’t realize how much I had been missing until I started remembering. Everything before the remembering was just wading through life with a sort of contentedness that I hadn’t known before. I’m unsure if I want to go back to that ignorance, the part of my life where I didn’t remember anything from before I left my hometown. Like I didn’t even remember the supposed turning point of my life: my Bar Mitzvah.

Recently, I remembered it, though. It was a hot day In July and I had woken up alone. It’s weird, and I thought it was weird, that there was ever a time I was alone in my bed. I got dressed alone, I ate breakfast alone, I left alone. Frankie was already waiting for me outside when I left, though, which was nice of him. He was the only one who showed up, and it’s like he didn’t have to but he told me he wanted to. He begged me to let him come along, and I deep down wanted him to be there. He was my best friend, and I trusted him to keep me safe, to keep me sane while I was surrounded by family and the rest of the temple. I don’t think I ever thanked him, so Frankie, thank you for going. Thank you for being my friend when I needed it.

The rest hadn’t shown up, they weren’t there for me. I don’t think I held a grudge when I was a kid, or maybe I did and I got good at hiding it, who knows. I felt alone without all of them but Frankie was my flashlight, he was my lighthouse on the top of a cliff signaling me in the right direction to go. He led my shaking body towards our synagogue and I don’t think I had ever been more scared to enter a building before, and I had entered the house that was in the outskirts of town looking like a Victorian fever dream. He opened the door for me and smiled at me, the kind of smile that tells you that the person believes in you. I didn’t really believe at the time because I was so tightly-wound with anxiety, and I’m pretty sure when my lightly scuffed dress shoes kept hitting the tile my stomach kept rumbling, like the closer I get to my denouement, the more I was going to fuck it up.

A more apt phrase would be a lamb to the slaughter, it felt like I was stumbling to my end, when I was claimed to be walking into a new beginning; a new change. That day I was supposed to become a man, and I didn’t feel like it back then, I don’t feel like my idea of becoming a man lines up with the Judaistic belief of manhood. Maybe it’s because nothing changed like they told me it would, I didn’t become this great and wonderful person they all wish you become after your Bar Mitzvah. I was still the same person, with the same memories, with the same friends, there wasn’t a new person in my shoes; as much as I wished and begged and hoped for it. There was no difference besides a new tear in my relationship with my father, my mother looking at me with pity because she knew, and Frankie looking at me terrified because he doesn’t know why I can’t get out of bed, why I can’t keep going, why I distance myself. Everything that stayed the same just laughs at me, and it’s a disgusting feeling, like the words I used for my speech taunting me.

I had put emphasis on the word “לְשַׁנּוֹת”, which is leshanot, it means to change.It feels like a lie looking back on it. I said how important those words were when I was a child, trying desperately to hide what was wrong with me? I mean, no one cared that there was anything wrong with me anyway, but I still tried to push every vulnerable piece of myself in a shoe-box that would sit in the back of the closet until I die. I don’t think there was an issue with my problems, or at least to Frankie and our friends, my parents are a different thing altogether. They were strict when I was a kid, like they were strict in olden times way: good grades and all that but the ideology of “go outside and don’t come back until you hear the dinner bell”. It probably wasn’t the best to have that philosophy in our town, from what I remember so many kids went missing and/or died.

It’s what happened to Scout’s brother that October evening, it’s why I have these scars on my face, it’s why I can’t remember. It’s come back, hasn’t it?

A funny thing that came back with all the memories, all the “dreams”, is the feelings from that time have come back to me. They stick around afters the dreams are over, though. I can feel the sickly bitter jealously that sat in my throat for a few summers, the disgust I held towards myself, and the strong explosion of red and hot feelings towards Frankie. I really loved him, I think.

stanley, they need you.

I know they do I know they do please leave me alone I know they do you don’t think i want to be there with them????? i want to so stop teasing me stop making this seem like its my fault when it isnt we just got separated i ddint mean foreverything else to happen please

I’ve developed some form of anxiety disorder, or at least my brain remembers that it existed before. I didn’t think I could ever feel this scared, feel this exhausted, feel this drawn out.

It’s like every day I wake up, and I have this moment of a clarifying calm, and that’s when everything crashes over me like this giant orchestra spelling out my demise. I can’t go a day without having a panic attack, I don’t think I’ve stopped shaking. I can’t even go to work without having to hide in my office, trying to hide my cries. I don’t think anyone has noticed, and usually people don’t, and I hate that it’s something I got used to. No one cares, no one notices, everyone thinks I’m fine, but I’m not. I don’t think I’ve ever been okay.

It’s not like you would know looking at me, I’m naturally quiet and a closet case, oh yeah, that’s a new thing I had to remember vividly. I mean it was certainly obvious from the last post, my breakdown over Frankie. (I’m fine, don’t worry... if any of you were actually worried, which I have a feeling you are not. You don’t exist.) If you asked any of my “friends” about me, about who I am, they would tell you some bullshit. I’m not who they think I am, and no one is ever interested in trying to find out more, to get to know me more than just surface level. Maybe that’s my fault, I’m closed off, I’m bad at talking to people, I don’t look kind of friendly, I’m an asshole.

Maybe the correct word is monster, but I reserve that word for the disgusting creatures of my dreams, or maybe I am one of them. Maybe I haunt myself, because I deserve the dissapointment, the failure, the fear. God, I’m so terrified all the fucking time. I can’t breathe without my brain screaming about my friends, about how I need to help them, about how I know what I need to do to keep them safe—even if I am so terrified that I can’t walk.

I should probably talk to a doctor about this, maybe I’ll get some answers.

Why do I miss him? He was obnoxious, he was crude, he was loud, but I can’t help but want him back. I love him.

Holy fuck, I loved him. I loved Frankie, I loved him so much that I don’t know if I can breathe right now. I think I’m shaking, because I never realized it before. Or maybe I did, did I know back then? Did he know back then? What were we? What happened to us? Why can’t I fucking remember him more than just his smile, than just his deaths? I want to find him again, but all I found is Scout. Why couldn’t I have found Frankie first?

Scout is fine, he is someone I cared about too, but I don’t think I could compare him to Frankie. Fuck fuck fuck fuck I miss him so much why does my heart hurt

Everything is scary lately. I don’t know why, I don’t know what started it, but I’m terrified.

Is this feeling new? I don’t know, because sometimes it feels like I’ve lived everyday of my life afraid. It’s all consuming, it eats me up, it calls to me in the voices of my friends. It calls to me in a voice that fills me with terror, because where do I know that voice? Why does it make my heart beat faster and faster? Why am I scared of it? Fuck.

My wife doesn’t know, and the idea of telling my closest co-worker (read: friend) makes my stomach thrash in turmoil. It’s not who I am to them, I’m not scared Stanley, I’m calm contemplative Stanley. I can’t be who I was, I can’t be who I am, because I forgot about it, I forgot who I was. They won’t like me, or they’ll think I’ve changed, when all I’m being is my true self.

I miss Frankie.

Sorry, it has been a few days since my last upload. There is a lot of things I need to think about, there is too much for me to consider.

Whoever keeps sending those asks, please, just tell me what you want. You know something I don’t, please stop torturing me and tell me what you want already.

you shouldn't be remembering so early.

What do you mean? Are you the one who did this? Did you take away my friends? Did you take away the only people I loved? Fuck you, leave me alone.

She doesn’t know, she doesn’t like it. Fuck. Her mother called her earlier today and she told her everything, she told her about the books, how they are vile, how they are atrocities upon nature. She told her mother that she doesn’t understand how I can find comfort, find solace, in them.

This was all a mistake, a horrid misjudgement. She was never going to understand. She never will.

We read through the first chapter, I chose the one I already read through so that I could watch my wife’s reactions. She doesn’t like it, and I know that she is too kind to stop doing so, but I know she is uncomfortable. We’ll stop reading it together, or at least we’ll attempt to finish the book and I’ll read the rest on my own.

I don’t think she understands why this is so important.

I asked my wife if she would read these along with me, and she is has agreed to suffer my delusions. Maybe I will be able to make her understand.

I genuinely hope I can, because I have a bad feeling and it has been growing over the past weeks. She won’t get it, and I don’t know if I would ever be able to get her to understand. It all seems to be taunting me, or at least trying to tell me something. I don’t know what it means, I feel like I’ve been saying that a lot lately, but it sends a very heavy and dark pit in my stomach. I think it is linked with the blood I saw in my dream, the one I can never place, the one in which I don’t see anyone but myself. Not the image of me as a child, but me right now.

Hopefully, none of it becomes true, and my wife can even gage any of this. If not, I’ll hear it in her weekly phonecall with her mother.

The birds are loud this morning, but I never noticed them before.

I’m not the only one who remembers us, our group. Well, maybe not remember, but just have the vague feeling, the idea that there is more. Scout brought us to life.

In the book I chose, we were there in these pages. Me, Frankie, Scout, Lance, Danny, and Liam—I just don’t think he knows. I only got halfway through before I realized how much of us was there, I looked into the interviews on it. I needed to know if he would say our names, if he knew us still, but he didn’t. He said they just came to him, they just existed, that group of kids were just somewhere in his brain. He doesn’t know us anymore, and maybe I feel a little fucked up about it, okay I absolutely feel like shit about it. That was our leader, the one who we all cared for and deeply respected, and he doesn’t even remember us. Were we ever that important to him? Or has it just been that long? I don’t know anymore, but I wish he remembered, I wish he said that they were kids he knew, that he would mention us.

I don’t know why we forget, why we forgot, but it doesn’t seem that it was just me. I should return home, if I could even remember what the name of it is, that’s how pathetic I am: I don’t even know the name of the place I need to return to. I should discuss this with my father, maybe he will finally relent, maybe he will finally tell me.

I just want to find them again. I just want to be myself again.

Everything else arrived earlier today, and since I just had an extremely awful dream that I will not dare to repeat. (I don’t think I would have the words to describe it entirely.) I will be starting one of the books, and let’s hope it can help me remember more.

Wish me luck.