Chapter Text
Dear “Diary”,
My existence has slowly degraded into a complete farce, the scale and absurdity of which only seems to increase with each passing day. I do not know quite when it started.
Perhaps it was when I was forced to embarrass myself in front of the entire New Squidbeak Splatoon in desperate aid of one Jeffrey Hidokera, A.K.A. that dipshit card-stealing squid whom I should have detached myself from long ago?
Or maybe it was when I failed to resist the temptation to reach out to one Dee Vistalume, A.K.A. DJ Dedf1sh, and foolishly made it my confidant in what time will expose as a reckless and selfish maneuver.
It could be the moment at which my attempts to vaguely menace one Selene Coley, A.K.A. “Fugirl”, via inksports backfired so dramatically as to be inexplicably helpful to my ends in only the most frustrating ways possible. That is also a contender.
Then again, the inflection point may not be in the past at all. After all, none of these events would ultimately be meaningful were it not for this moment, in which I finally “reestablish” “contact” with you, “Diary”, despite the fact that talking to “you” in this format, or indeed imagining that there is a “you” to speak with at all, has historically amounted to nothing but misery cloaked in eight thousand failed attempts at closure. Maybe it is only here and now that I take my first true step towards whatever aimless oblivion awaits.
In any case, whenever this started, the whole of 2023 has seen fit to barrage me ceaselessly with the inescapability of my past, and the hollowness of my future. Everything is different now, and I am proving utterly incapable of charting a course through the storm. I despise it all, and even as I am now forced to wonder which of of my long-held grudges are substantiated or even really felt, I still have no compass to point me towards what deserves my scorn and what I must let go in the interest of ever being a useful or contented person.
I don't have to tell you who I wish was here to help me navigate it all.
All that is to say, today is 16 November 2023, the seventh anniversary of her original departure, and I still haven't moved on. I apologize for misleading “you” on this when “we” last “spoke”. I truly, honestly saw fit to believe that seventy thousand words of self-indulgent crab-shit would be enough to put it all behind me. To seal it all away forever.
You must have known, though. I certainly did, much as I stewed in denial about it. Yes, of course the time came for my endless manifesto to worm its way out of its enclosure and into the hands of all those mentioned above, in one way or another. Of course I found more to feel my exhausting feelings about, and allowed those individuals within proximity of my life. And, of course, it is only through these people that I have come to stand here now, at the precipice.
Hidokera has certainly had her dagger stuck dutifully under the last scale in my armor for some time now. Coley's recent actions left me with an aching curiosity that made further research inevitable. And once that was begun, it wasn't long before Vistalume furnished her recommendation. Now, all that is left is myself, and my choice.
Do I continue with my normal life, accepting the inevitability that a dream such as this can only amount to yet another miserable tradeoff in a long line of them?
Or do I contact Marina Ida, and offer my assistance with this… project, of hers?
…
I will need some time to think it over.
Regards,
Astrid Serenia