Aerivyr

All I can say is that leaving a church is like leaving a family.
Especially when it’s their fault.
Your friends, your fellow believers, the one group of people that are supposed to support you, betrayed you.
They talked behind your back, they lied to you.
This is not the word of Christ.
They deserve it.
But it still feels awful to leave.
I was baptised here.
I was blessed here.
Countless bible readings, hymns, smiles, laughs, friendships.
It is a part of me.
It is my congregation.
It is my family.
And I will always be a child of God, but…
A foster family is not the same.
I grew up with this church.
Same congregation, same family.
How can I leave?
How can I become an orphan?
How can I live with their betrayal?
Christ will guide me, but…
I can’t go.
What about all I have to do?
I would have been in the choir.
Operated the slideshow from the back.
I would have done so many things.
My family…
Now maybe I understand why my father is an atheist.
You escape this.
A second family is too much pain.
I can’t bear to leave.

I had a very interesting conversation with two of my friends yesterday concerning death. Not our usual topic, I promise you.

My first friend, who is an atheist, is scared of what comes after death. She is scared of there being nothing, simply darkness. ’I’m just scared of being alone.’

My second friend, a Hindu, is scared of the death itself. ’I’m scared it will come unexpectedly.’ To just be gone, like that. Expired. Maybe she also fears not being able to say goodbye.

I, a Christian, am not scared of death. To me, death is just a rebirth. I will be born again into eternal life with my Lord Jesus Christ. That which I’m scared of is what comes before death. That I won’t do what I want to do, that I won’t have time to live how I want to. I’m scared I’ll never publish a book. I’m scared I’ll never travel the world. I’m scared I’ll never marry, never hold a baby in my arms and call it mine. What if I die before I’m done… that’s what I’m scared of.

I reccomend strongly that you do not read this post. It is an illiterate rave about an anime, and also involves huge spoilers.

So I just watched the end of Code Geass. Can I just say… what the ****?????? It is worse than Death Note. Death Note was bad enough, I was depressed about it for days after watching the last episode.

So Lelouch dies. Big deal. We knew that. If he didn’t, there would be something wrong. He’s an antihero, he has to die. To be honest, by this point, I was hoping he would do it soon. He’s being generally evil and overlordy and dictatorish and cruel and you want him to fail and die.

He’s just strolling along, in a big float-thing, going to an execution, when all of a sudden—lo and behold— Zero shows up. Well, there’s a twist. Zero is Lelouch, so what exactly is going on here?

It is then you start to suspect the major heartbreak that is about to follow. Zero leaps up to Lelouch, after encountering a few minor, easily-dispatched enemies. During this time, there are some flashbacks of… wait, what’s this? Lelouch planned all this? He planned to make the world hate him, so that Suzaku could just hop along and murder him and let everything be good again? A tear-jerking sacrifice for world peace?

Oh, ****.

By now, you’re panicking. Lelouch can’t die. Not now. Not now we know he’s really nice. Suzaku—for you now know it is he—is making a pained face as he draws back his sword, and you’re sure he won’t really do it. He’ll stop. Of course he’ll stop. He’ll stop right at the last minute and…

Why is there blood? Why is Lelouch gasping, and dying and falling? He slides down to his younger sister, who now hates him, and as she sees him, she understands. She realises what he’s done.

‘Onii-chan?’ she whispers. Followed by, ‘I love you!’

And Lelouch’s dying words are… ‘Yes. I destroyed the world… to recreate it.’

And then he dies.

Just like that.

Dies.

And all the people are cheering, and crying, ‘Zero! Zero!’ as Suzaku stands with a cool pose. And Nunnally is screaming.

We’re in a pretty poor state, aren’t we?

If you live in an urban nightmare like I do, you’ll know what I mean. Especially in Britain.

In the suburbs of London, as much as I love the area, there are no smiles. If you so much as look at a stranger, you will be considered rude. Simple a long stretch of grey monotony. Even the sky is normally a canvas of cement-coloured gloom.

Where are the colours? Where is the friendliness? Where has compassion for other human beings gone? Out of the window, seemingly.

All the same. It’s a wonder the suicide rate isn’t higher. I myself, and my positivity has rocketed recently, see cars and thoughts swirl unbidden in my head: What if I threw myself under that? Would anyone care?

Desperate to escape the boredom, I try to do whatever I can to swerve away from the norm. For example, I sometimes walk home with no shoes on. Striding along in just my socksies.

Still, even as I fight it, my creativity is ebbing away into… ordinary thoughts. The very words make me shudder.

I need new ways to be different. New ways to be stared at, to be the weird one. Any ideas? Any at all?

So I propose a mission, for all the people at WriteForTen: spread it. Have the power to be unique. Do crazy things, to add colour to life! Dystopian novels must be prevented, not from being written, but from being realised. If you won’t help me with this, then so be it.

A diamond among pebbles. That’s a lovely metaphor.

Isn’t it strange how we adapt our environment? You don’t see other members of the animal kingdom doing this; not to such an extent, anyway. Most things adapt to suit their environment. We change our environment to suit us.

Why are we so proud of our buildings? Wouldn’t it be better if we could thrive without them?