Right about now I wish I had been able to have a normal life. I REALLY wish it. The storms in my head seem to be the same storms that ripped through the last decade or so of my life. It started with childhood and my parents splitting, and now - this very minute, knowing that they are gone. For good. Betting high and bluffing, I hoped that if I stayed out of trouble, if I laid low, if I quietly pulled out the information laid out in front of me on all those networks, I'd get my parents back. I am writing right now because I don't know what else to do. It feels like I've hit a wall, and the numbness is huge, solid. I welcome it. Beth is a kind lady. Very beautiful, but also very real. Sincere. She seemed almost as sad as me when she told me. She seemed relieved. Maybe I'm wrong. My mind is too foggy right now to tell for sure. But I think it was something she wanted to know more than she knew how she felt about it, if that makes any sense. Anyway. In a twisted way, I wish I could find an analogy for this woman, this messenger in the wilderness, laptop and striking eyes, a character from a book. I could then just make this all go away, you know? Give her winged sandals and a pseudonym, and then I'd just leave. I'd just go on looking until I'm dead. A pile of dust. I want to say I am sorry. Apologies just can't cut it in a situation like this, and so I won't even try to make this poetic. I'm sorry. I know now that pretty much everything I touch, every thing I have ever loved, has been totally messed up. I have seen so many things fall into chaos and I am not sure I even know how to grieve. I have been on the run so long now that I think I let my brain get ahead of me. Do you know what it's like, when I'm in that hacking zone, night after night, and the numbers keep tumbling right in front of my eyes? I hear music. It's the best music I've ever heard, and I want to keep drowning in it until all the bad notes and cheap backbeats are gone. I want to wear the CD out with replays. I want to re-record it with fixes. I search for connections in literature, in the stuff we humans have created in order to understand the world. I was so crazy with the loss of Mom and Dad that I forgot about what I was supposed to be doing. If I could just be smart enough, and fast enough, and if I could get enough control over the networks that screwed me over in the first place, I could win them back. I'd be King, and the world would have to give up and say, "Here's your mother and father. We give up. You totally rule." In the course of breaking and entering and taking and taking, I killed them just as much as I've broken texel's ankle, and made scratch and all the rest of you leave me in disgust and distrust. I don't think anyone within 1000 miles of me is safe right now. I wanna go live in a cave and just forget about the world and everything in it. I will try not to care about videogames. I won't miss cheeseburgers. I love you, mom. I love you, dad. And I'm sorry I have made such a mess of things. If there's anything I can do to fix this (how can I bring you back? HOW?), I will do it. OK, here's the part where I stop writing.