Chapter Text
Your name is Dave Strider and you've recently turned ten. Your interests involve many things such as being an amateur rapper, starting a wonderfully terrible comic, and becoming obsessed with really awful movies you can't seem to muster up the ability to enjoy, even ironically. You aren't entirely sure why you watch all these horrendous action movies so much. It's not for any real entertainment, but you somehow feel bound to watch them. They're important, in some way you don't understand. It doesn't really help that you have a strange urge to want to own every Nic Cage movie in existence and watch them until they become a part of you. You tend to resist these urges, though, and have yet to watch any movie containing this particular actor. Instead, you plop down and start playing some ill beats while you practice rapping. Someday you'll be the fucking best. For a while, you just focus on that and ignore the strange urges of interests that aren't yours. It's nice- to pretend you don't have them. That way you can feel normal.
You are Dave Strider and you are now thirteen. You failed to resist the urge of watching Nicholas Cage movies and now have a collection going. It's strange, though. You have no willing desire to ever want to watch or even to admit to owning these movies. Something about them just seems so damn important. Even so, it's not just movies anymore. You find yourself intrigued in big, white fluffy dogs, pumpkins, and even knitting needles. If you have to guess, you'd say it has to do with this feeling invested in odd objects seems to grow every year. You can't really describe this thing. It's like you're having this dream, a dream so great and realistic that you may or may not prefer it to reality. When you sleep, the dream and all the memories along with it fall perfectly into place, but upon awakening everything vanishes. Yet you dream the same dream over and over. Sometimes you can remember little tidbits, but they never add up to mean anything. You get some weird sensation when you wake up that something huge is missing from your life. It makes your heart heavy and weary like there's just something so tragic about not having whatever in your life anymore. On those mornings, it takes you a while to get out of bed and get on with your life. It's like that simply because you lie there trying to remember anything, anything at all and nothing comes and it leaves you with the worst feeling of all: failure.
Sometimes you wonder if this feeling will ever go away, this feeling of being incomplete. You have your shell of you, of Dave Strider coating the top but inside is hollow and empty. Inside of you there is a void you realize you've been trying to fill with things. You've tried throwing all those movies away, or the knitting needles you've collected over time. You once became so wound up over these interests you can't control, these things that aren't you in any way, that the pumpkin in your room almost met its fate on the sidewalk beside your apartment building yesterday. You saved it, though. You saved it just like you did the movies and the knitting supplies. After it was pulled safely inside from hanging in your hands out the window, you cuddled it to you and cried like you had almost killed an old friend.
Sometimes you're scared of what this is doing to you. It has scared you to just think of never finding any answers and being stuck with these compulsions you can't handle for the rest of your life. You don't want to live like this, never knowing just what you need, what you're looking for and you think you'd rather die several times before being stuck with that fate.
You're fifteen now. In the past few years, more things have been added to the list of your obsessions. Recently, time has become a huge one. You can't go anywhere without knowing the time or carrying your expensive new phone. It was the only thing you wanted besides a new setup for your turntables. Not to say there weren't other things you really wanted to ask for, but those were part of your obsessions and you would not allow your own true interests to be overrode by something like that.
(but they are theyre taking over your life you cant do anything for you anymore youre always searching and scanning the crowd but for what )
Sometimes you catch yourself staring at people. In an instant you feel so light, like whatever is wrong with you is healing just by seeing them and then you get a better look and suddenly your mood sinks so low you feel like you're drowning in heartache and depression. Other times, you find yourself thinking of little jokes. They're like inside jokes between best friends that you are and are not in on at the same time. Sort of how just yesterday you saw some review of a shitty wizard game coming out and all you could think was "gonna write slash about this lalonde?"
You don't know anyone with the name Lalonde.
Those feelings that started gnawing at you back then? It's a pit inside of you now. The void opened up and dragged away more of you into it. It's like your dream - information wells up in there, but you have no access to it. You only know what you remember from the dream, but all of it is so ridiculous it's crazy. You've seen a man in almost all white with a hat and these weird shades before.
Now that you think about it, it strikes as odd you that you've never felt compelled to look for him. Although, you can't wonder about the man for too long before you find that you’ve turned into a sobbing mess. Just tears dripping from your eyes and it feels like someone has stabbed you in the chest because he just means so much to you. You have no idea why, and it feels like a part of you in that void has died.
You've decided thinking of him obviously isn't the best idea.
Instead, you go back to making shitty webcomics after removing all traces of tears. You log onto pesterchum, searching and waiting for the right person to show up.
(You already know you'll never find this person, or these people, or any of the things you suppose you're trying to find. This doesn't stop you, though. Hope hasn't died yet.)