Prompt

[My example of an entry for Contest #6:
Include this line: "...but if anyone asks, tell them we're fine."
Must be submitted before midnight on the last day of March, 2013.]


We are fine. Things may hurt, but in the end, we'll be fine. There are many people out there that have things worse than us. Worry about them. We'll be fine.

We often get asked how we manage, how we can live with all this, how we can pull through even the hardest of times. Well, it's hard. Anyone can tell you that. God, it's hard. People don't understand what they can't see, and there's no way in hell we'll show them. What it's like to cry. What it's like to hurt. What it's like to fall.

No, we won't fall. We're fine. Everything this life throws at us - we'll take it head on, and we'll be triumphant. In the end, we'll be the ones left. There is nothing in this world that can kill us. So we'll be fine.


...I sometimes wonder what it would be like to give up. I wonder: what would happen if we just...threw in the flag and walked away. Would people grieve? Would people mourn? Would they care? Or would some other hotshots pick up the burden where we left it and walk the path, that treacherous path, that we were too weak to carry? I sometimes wonder, but I never consider. Because we'll be fine...in the end.

I cannot abandon this duty, but I cannot abandon this fear. The questions. The what-ifs. Because what if we aren't enough? What if we can't win? What if we could've saved these - these unfortunate people? What if we just...

What would happen if, one day, we just broke? Got sick of life. Tired of living. And even though we were fine, we would never reclaim our selves.

I've been having visions. Not dreams; I haven't been sleeping. But sometimes in the night I'll see myself, ten or twenty years along the road, alive but unwell. Healthy but sick. Free but unhappy. These days it's like scaling an insurmountable wall, forever. There's no end to it. There will always be evil. There will always be villains. But there will never be peace, nor respite.

We are the heroes. The victors. The damned.

...but if anyone asks, tell them we're fine.

-Emily