Apology

I want to take a moment and apologize for what I wrote yesterday.

To be clear, I’m not sorry about what I did. I didn’t know Jesse or his friends and that three strangers would…

I understand why people are afraid of Ratfanger’s Disease. If anyone knows the horror of an auto-immune deficiency disease, it’s me. But it’s not like AIDS. No one knows how it spreads. And no one really knows how to treat it, what the survival rate really is.

That all makes sense to me.

Frankly, I’m as scared as everyone else. What if I really am the only person with an immunity? What if I spend the next few years watching my loved ones get sick and die? My sister, Charlie… my mom. Even Rebecca. Even the people who have hurt me the worst, who have smashed my heart through my ribcage in their willingness to exploit me.

I desperately don’t want to see anyone die.

Even now, though, I think about holding Jesse down. There’s no visual image in my head to go with the memory of lashing down on him with the broom, on the feeling of the –

I’m trying not to be swept up in my emotion again. But I do want to make it clear, I don’t regret standing up for myself. I don’t feel bad that they were the outlet of months of persecution and pursuit.

I fear indulging violence, even in self-defense. I fear the way talking about it makes me feel. Even now as I write all this into my phone, surrounded by the tranquility Cabrillo Point. As I try to talk about how it felt, my thoughts become thick and run slowly. A sense of elation begins to light. It feels so good.

And I wanted it. I wanted so badly to keep striking until he was simply gone.

So I came up here before work today in order to try and distance myself from those feelings.

The reason why I’m writing is to apologize to you.

In no way did I mean to endorse my indulgence. What I did was wrong, even in defense. I want to make it clear to you that I realize that and apologize for exposing you to it.

I am trying to be my better self.