Good lord. This place is still around, huh? I'm not sure whether I'm happy to see it or not. Probably both.
I told myself I'd come back for the fifth anniversary. And here we are: here, today. It's been five years since I wrote the words over there to the left. I wonder if anyone still remembers me. I wonder if anyone from back then is even still here. I wouldn't blame you all for leaving. I can't say I've been back more than a handful of times in all these years.
'All these years'. What a strange phrase. Three, four, five years? What do those numbers even mean? What it means is different, I'm sure, for me than it is for you. To me, this whole Cracky thing is something that happened both yesterday and never at all.
But I can't be the only one who remembers what happened here those years ago. Can I be the only one who came back in the hopes of maybe seeing a familiar face? The memory is foggy and gets foggier by the day, but I can still remember a few names. anything, Abyss, Aimpoint, Daisuke, Suede, whatbandages. Has everyone moved on? I hope you have, though it would be nice to see you again. Maybe just to remind myself that it really did happen.
I've moved on. It's so strange to think I ever doubted I would. At times, I feel like maybe I was the only one who took everything so seriously. Was it really as dire as it seemed at the time? Maybe it was just a game and the fantasy got the best of me.
I've lost touch with the person I was back then. It's hard to believe something about this girl was so profound that it changed my life, but it did. Why? How? My heart remembers, but my brain doesn't. I couldn't possibly put it into words. I don't understand anymore. The cause, or the effects, really. I'm fundamentally different now than I was five years ago. How much of that is a result of a strange girl I discovered on the internet? Who can say?
Once or twice, I've ventured into that dingy, musty-smelling corner of my hard drive where my Cracky archives still live (how it's survived the countless formats and hard drive crashes is a mystery). Pictures, instant message conversations, saved threads. Reading the words I wrote, it's impossible to imagine them coming from of my fingers. I was so obsessed. So self-important. So young.
I'd say I'm an adult now, but if I've learned anything, it's that that word doesn't really mean much. I'm older. Maybe a little wiser. I'm happier; that's for sure. Things have changed.
Or have they?
-Last