it's a metaphor for consumerism, i think

Ending 3/3

Man, I didn't know what to think.

The last couple of days have been hard, harder than anything I've ever experienced in my life. And here's the worst part, right? I'm just some guy . I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and got burnt for it. And all the while there's some weird "there are two wolves inside of you" situation going on in me that I just have to deal with.

That's the whole fucked up part with Dankovsky and Artemy and such? And wait, if this is my brain, can I just call him Daniil? You know what, I will. So the thing with Daniil and Artemy? Yeah, I don't know what that is. All I know is it's making my life so much harder than it has to be, because now not only am I fighting the plague I am also fighting my raging homosexuality.

But despite it all, I try my best to keep up my mantras. Those thoughts that keep you going and hold you afloat, to remind you of what you are. Because you see, in life, there are three things to strive for:

The first is truth. If not truth to others, truth to yourself. If you lie to yourself, there is no peace. Not for you, not for anyone. If you lie to yourself, you will never truly be you, you will be just an actor. And despite how Pathologic is, you don't want to be an actor, because you'll be miserable. You're free to lie to me, but not yourself.

The second is courage. Courage to create, courage to be, courage to do. You don't need to be a courageous person for this either- it's simply enough to get up in the morning and drink a glass of water. That's already the courage to be, to take up space, to exist.

The third is love. And love's such a broad word and I'm sorry about that, but it's so important. Love for the sunrays when the day starts, or love for the dew on the leaves. Love for the people around you or love for the laughter on the bus from a joke you couldn't hear a stranger make. It's so important to open your heart and to love. It's so important yet it's so easy to forget, because if you don't open your heart to love it's hard to love yourself, too. And you deserve to love yourself.

I used these three things to live through my life so far. Everything kind of cobbled up together until there were words on a page and I survived them and thought "yup, this sounds coherent."

And I'm sorry , if this way of thinking sounds wishy-washy or whatever, but it is. The entire story was wishy-washy, I'm incredibly full of myself and can't stop yapping. And after all of it you wanted more- I mean, you got this far, after all. But after this, I can't give more, nothing canon at least. I'm spent, my doll is breaking. This is all I have left to give you. This was my passion project. This is what I love. This is my truth. This is my courage. This sounds incredibly stupid.

And I'm not sorry for that at all.

-+-

ACT 3 SCENE 1

Stage Left, Mark Immortell
Stage Right.. ME!!!

"So this is it, then?" He keeps distance from me, warily. "This is what you've been creating behind the scenes? Is this your magnum opus?"

"Far from- wait, what?" I stand up straight, my eyes fixing on Mark. "What just happened, where are we?"

The man tips his head to the side, inspecting me with a curious look, before asking "Forgot your lines, did you?"

"No, far from it, I don't have any lines." I hold up my arms horizontally, a classic stage pose "I'm asking where are we because I don't know what's going on. I just- what was that? What was that before? We're not back at the beginning, are we?"