[Originally posted at Ana Mardoll's Ramblings.]
[Twilight begins with Bella monologing about dying, it seemed like Edith and Ben's story might as well begin the same way.]
When you're lying bleeding on the ground, realizing that the thing flowing from your body isn't so much blood as it is the hope that you'll live to see another day, and trying desperately to control your heartbeat out of the silly belief that maybe, just maybe, if it weren't beating so hard and pushing the blood out of you so fast you'd live long enough to be rescued --because it might not be a realistic expectation but at times like these you grasp at whatever presents itself-- you find that the situation is actually remarkably conducive to reflection.
It might not be the cleanest type of reflection ever, there are tangents and subordinate clauses that takeover entire paragraphs, the thinking might not always be strictly linear, and the leaps might not always make sense, but what else are you going to when lying bleeding on the ground if not think about how you got there? It's certainly more pleasant than thinking about the killer in the corner, ready to finish the job she so expertly started.
And so I found myself faced with a simple question: if I had known, if I had somehow --impossibly-- known, what was going to happen going in, would I have gone to Forks? If I just had a general idea, if it had been explained to me in the simplest terms and most convenient definitions, then of course I wouldn't. There's no chance in Hell, Dante's or otherwise.
But if I had understanding of what would go on in Forks --if I knew what would happen to me and who I would meet and how I would feel-- if I knew, in detail, how I would end up here, dying on this floor, then the answer is equally clear and completely opposite: I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
[Twilight begins with Bella monologing about dying, it seemed like Edith and Ben's story might as well begin the same way.]
When you're lying bleeding on the ground, realizing that the thing flowing from your body isn't so much blood as it is the hope that you'll live to see another day, and trying desperately to control your heartbeat out of the silly belief that maybe, just maybe, if it weren't beating so hard and pushing the blood out of you so fast you'd live long enough to be rescued --because it might not be a realistic expectation but at times like these you grasp at whatever presents itself-- you find that the situation is actually remarkably conducive to reflection.
It might not be the cleanest type of reflection ever, there are tangents and subordinate clauses that takeover entire paragraphs, the thinking might not always be strictly linear, and the leaps might not always make sense, but what else are you going to when lying bleeding on the ground if not think about how you got there? It's certainly more pleasant than thinking about the killer in the corner, ready to finish the job she so expertly started.
And so I found myself faced with a simple question: if I had known, if I had somehow --impossibly-- known, what was going to happen going in, would I have gone to Forks? If I just had a general idea, if it had been explained to me in the simplest terms and most convenient definitions, then of course I wouldn't. There's no chance in Hell, Dante's or otherwise.
But if I had understanding of what would go on in Forks --if I knew what would happen to me and who I would meet and how I would feel-- if I knew, in detail, how I would end up here, dying on this floor, then the answer is equally clear and completely opposite: I wouldn't have missed it for the world.
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