This is why Caliban was a punishment. I realize it now - it's a beautiful, perfect world of nothingness. No connection, no longing, no . . . love. A world we're trapped in until we're needed here, a world we're condemned to while everyone we might care about forgets us.

The cruelest thing, hope, the way it strings you along, the way it makes you believe.

It's just that it's impossible to be a broken or whole person. You can only be a person. You can only exist, you can only belong to yourself, and you can only be responsible for your own happiness or belonging or whatever. That broken-part-piece-whole thing is just a trick of the mortal mind.

I follow, always, because its the only time when our hearts beat in perfect harmony, the only time when Im certain, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that we are one person broken in two.

This is why Caliban was a punishment. I realize it now - it's a beautiful, perfect world of nothingness. No connection, no longing, no . . . love. A world we're trapped in until we're needed here, a world we're condemned to while everyone we might care about forgets us.

I am confident, I am capable, and I will not wait to be rescued by a woodsman or a hunter.

Books didn't make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books.