Things I Can't Have

I dreamt of playing with children again, I'm pretty sure they are my brother's since he was there. It was a family barbecue. The idea of mothering is an odd one for me, I never wanted to be a mother and I'm not sad I now can't be one. But I had been looking forward to being the cool aunt all my nieces and/or nephews loved. And I am very sad I cannot spend time with my family, we didn't get much time together as it was because of how far apart we are.

I'm thinking of Christmas morning, that time after opening presents when we all would be sitting in the living room. Mom would have just made the cinnamon rolls from the tube with the orange frosting and we'd sit and watch outside for snow even though it never snowed on Christmas. Or watching football on a Sunday afternoon, all snuggled in with the sky grey outside and cracking jokes at whatever caught our fancy.

For once I'm happy to say I don't feel worse than before, those memories were things I dwelled on before. That is just part of being an adult and living far from your loved ones. I just know that it hasn't set in yet the fact that I don't get to see them ever again. I could try using my holoform but I'm just too worried that I wouldn't replicate every detail and they would notice. That is what I fear most, of all the people to find out my human form is not real, those would be the ones I would hate to have to make sure I never see again. As it is right now I can still email Mom and facebook bro and chat on the phone every so often with Dad and that is better than nothing. I can't physically see them but I can at least talk to them.

And if nothing else with how things are now I'm the only one who has to suffer from this.

Waiting on the Doctor

I haven't emailed the doc, I'm waiting for him to email me again. It is a silly formaility of mine that rivals some of the trivial standards of Versailles. I want to talk to him, I want to email him but I need to wait until he emails me once more. Somehow that would prove his intentions genuine.

It is stupid.

But I'm desperate. Desperate to talk.

The writers' group is fine but I have to lie so thoroughly it is almost more tiring than pleasurable. I can't tell them where I am from or where I live or who I really am. I'm a car in the parking lot and not the image they see before them.

I'm pretty sure I know what it would be like to be a ghost now.

Slipping Back Into Society

This solitary time has been great to figure out some of my interal workings. To sort out my thoughts and feelings. I haven't really resolved any of the big looming questions or anxieties but I at least figured out what they are.

I can't talk out these problems with anyone, but I am missing being social. I miss having dinner with friends and all those silly conversations about the merits of Moonstruck and how romantic comedies these days aren't nearly as good.

There is an advertisement for a writer's group near where I've been staying, I'm thinking of going to it. One of the things about all the crazy plot twists in my life is that they would make for an interesting book. Obviously it would be sold as fiction and I couldn't write everything exactly as it happened but I can write on the culture shock and craziness of aliens secretly living among us. And this would give me a chance to make some new friends. Writers are always a fun brand of crazy.

The Good Doctor

I got an email from the shrink, he was using his personal email which was odd but the IP address matches some previous emails he sent from his home before. He says he wants to help me still, that he figures I ran off and wasn't kidnapped (though he doesn't mention if that is what anyone else thinks). He's no longer officially working my case but he says that he's more worried about my well being than being paid.

It is sweet of him, he's a good doctor I don't think I've ever thought anything different. He's the whole reason I started writing things down, to help sort through my thoughts. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. I'm not sure I'd have come to stare down the behemoth before me that is the feeling of uselessness and emptiness so quickly if I hadn't have been working so hard to put the storm of feelings and thought fragments into coherent sentences.

But I don't know if I can trust him. This could all be a ruse to try and catch me. I mean, I checked and he was reassigned to new work in San Diego but the idea that my own admitting weakness would be the thing to end my vacation is not something I can handle. In my previous life I couldn't even admit weakness to my own family. I lied before I admitted it just like I would do anything that would risk me crying in front of anyone. Just the idea of going to a psychiatrist was preposterious. I couldn't admit to having such faults.

Even now I still feel the shame of not being able to sort myself out. For considering writing back.

But if I am still staring down the emptiness next week I think I will email him and ask what one is supposed to do. What am I supposed to do with my whole life ahead of me, with so many more lives than my whole life looming darkly like a prison?

The Feeling of Waiting

I've been doing very good distracting myself with work and reading e-books but every so often it finds me. My foot slips a little and I inadvertently glance into the bottomless pit that is the eternity I fear. After those brief little glances it eats at the edges of my consciousness. It isn't the last moments that scare me, that haunt me. It is all the days and years and eternities between the moment I am in and the moment I will cease to be.

If these millions of days that loom in every shadow were something physical I would give them to all the people who are dying with things left undone and families to sit with not feeling the need to say anything but just enjoying their company.

If I ever do come upon the Autobots again I am going to be selfish and tell them the truth. We humans are great at persevering and surviving but we are a finite species. We function at our greatest when we know we have only so much time and even that isn't promised to us. We burn so brightly because we know we don't have long. They should never have revived me.

This is the feeling of waiting for the madness and sorrow and ambivalence to overcome the voice that has always been with me telling me to live.

A Nervousness I've Had All Along

Every time I see a blue Corvette my mind races and I have a hard time not bolting like a rabbit who has sensed a fox. I've got my sensors set so any Cybertronian should show up once they are within a mile of me though I'm sure any determined bot could figure a way to dampen their signal. Luckily there aren't very many yellow and black new style Camaros or any of the other Autobots. Well. Barring Ironhide, there are tons of big black trucks, though not as many as blue Corvettes. And it is the idea of Tracks hunting me down. With him I'd wonder if it was personal, if he was mad I had run off without telling him again. That he was mad I purposely fell off the radar.

It is so silly for that to be my biggest worry. That my nervousness is almost all about having hurt Tracks's feelings. Not that the government may now consider me a traitor and wish to capture and detain me. Not that the Autobots may think I've gone over to the Decepticons. Not that all my hard work may unravel. My worry is that Tracks is mad.

I guess part of me has always figured I would cross paths with him again and I would want it to be like the time before everything hit the fan. After his planetfall but before the Autobots made their home at Norton. That glorious time when we we bantered back and forth and were rather blissfully unaware that there were Decepticons out on this world. But we all dream of better times when we are unsure or afraid or sad.

I guess that is why I dream of my life before. Because I am unsure. I am unsure what I am supposed to do, Cybertronians live for millenia so I've got a lot of time to figure out what to do with.

This Fleeting Sense of Calm

For the past week I've woken up every morning parked at a camp site that overlooks the ocean, surrounded by empty camp sites. The mornings start out grey and the mist takes a while to dissipate. Everything is silent other than the little quails that dash about and the waves on the shore. It is amazing.

I should have done this years ago.

That is what I always think. But then, after the sun sets, finally sinking below the ocean I'm afraid. I'm filled with panic and wish I could cry. And then I wake up in the morning, a little before the sun rises to the chirps of the quails darting about.

And then here I am, after a week of serenity and terror, left wondering if this is what the rest of eternity is going to be like.

Almost Natural

My boss is a little annoyed with me since I emailed him the day before I left that he'd have to schedule calls. I told him it was because my phone coverage is terrible but it really is because I have to keep my cell phone without power. Probably a little overkill but I'm doing all I can to not be tracked. By now my absense has been noticed at the base and the fact I disabled my comm and all trackers has probably got them worried I've been kidnapped or unhappy that I've defected. This is likely the most important time for me to keep under the radar. After a few months I will quite likely not be their top priority and won't have to worry so much. After a year or two they will likely not care anymore. I'll still have to be a little careful since they might be watching my old haunts but by then maybe I'll finally be ready to let go of those and have created a new home.

The one upside is that I am still am to keep in contact with all my friends who don't know about the giant robots. I can't mention where I am but I can keep up on their lives and chat through facebook and keep emailing mom. It is kind of nice to pretend like I never met any of the Autobots. That I never got drawn into their war.

A Sense of Freedom

Two days have passed and the fear of being tracked down and scolded for my wandering is starting to subside. It is being replaced by a wonderful sense of freedom. Of relief. I thought of going to Las Vegas but the fun in that town is definitely for humans and not someone the size of a car. So I went up the California coast and drove around San Francisco yesterday and went further north to Oregon. I still need to get some work done on the database project and touch base with my assistant to make sure her digitizing work is on schedule so I'm going to stay here in Oregon for another day or so until that is all sorted and then go explore Washington. I've never been there but it looks so lush and green.

And part of this escape is going almost completely off the grid. I can't go completely off since I have to stay connected for work and a little bit of tech around should help camoflague me.

I think this may work out.

The Uneasy Night Before Something Big

That is what tonight is. I disabled my beacon earlier after leaving the Autobot base and came home to make sure the house is clean and ready to be locked up. I'd love to be able to just hide out here and be left alone but I know that someone will think to drop by. It would probably be Mikaela or Tracks. Mickaela wouldn't say anything for awhile I think but it would just be another instance of annoyance for Tracks that I ran off home again. He has been worried about me. That is why I had to wait for awhile to set things in motion, he has been keeping tabs on me. And I will miss him, I still enjoy spending time with him I just need a little break. This break from the Autobots will likely be permanent, it just isn't the life I want.

I just don't understand why they were so desperate to revive me. It was always one of those things I had discussed with my family that if I was in an accident or something to not keep me on life support. This Cybertronian form is like the most perverse version of that. I haven't been revived, I've been trapped and forced to watch my former life without being able to return to it.