Diary Entry #1

Dear Diary,

It feels strange writing “dear diary” as though I have some sort of sense of endearment towards the documentation of my thoughts. It feels child-like, as though I’m writing to an imaginary friend. Academically, I don’t look down on what others might consider child-like or immature, but it still feels off to me, it feels like a misrepresentation of who I am, which seems to contradict the purpose of self-documentation, being to accurately express oneself with pen and paper. Perhaps there is an alternative to writing “dear diary” at the start of a diary entry, but I wouldn’t know what that alternative might be.

To whomever might be reading this in the future, I apologize if my execution is crude. I’ve never really done this before, but in light of today’s events, I’ve been sitting alone in a quiet room for the past several hours unable to reach a conclusion. Writing this is kind of like passing off my problems to someone else, be it another person, or myself in the future, but this was all I could think to do.

I watched a man die today. It isn’t the first time that’s happened, and it probably won’t be the last. The man’s name was “Morgan”, and I’ve known him for most of my life. I don’t have clear memories of my early childhood; in fact, I’ve gotten the impression that I remember much less than your average person. People have reacted with surprise when I’ve told them that I can’t remember if I used to believe in Santa. Sometimes I wonder if that means anything. Did something break in me at a young age? Do my problems stretch back that far?

In any case, for as long as I can remember, Morgan has been around. He’s never told me much about himself, so I don’t really know if he knew my parents, or if he took care of me for other reasons. Knowing his personality, it wouldn’t surprise me if I was simply a random kid with nowhere to go that he decided to clothe, feed, and shelter. Morgan wasn’t a bleeding heart, he was actually fairly cold and distant. Maybe he wanted someone’s company, but he was too reserved with his feelings to ever let that side of him show. Or maybe he was more like me. Maybe he believed in doing the right thing, but he didn’t feel any sort of love or joy or compassion while doing it.

His approach to parental guidance was very hands off, I guess you could say. I never felt much of an attachment to him, despite knowing full well that he was the person I’ve spent the most of my life with. Once I was old enough, we said our goodbyes and I took off, look for something. It’s hard to explain why I decided to leave, and it’s not really important to what I felt compelled to write about tonight, so I’ll just leave it at that.

I was here today to watch him die because I was feeling nostalgic, I guess you could say. After years of being on my own and more or less forgetting about where I came from, circumstance made me remember this place. I’ve been working hard to contribute to organized efforts to re-build, to fix roads and cities, to restore government and systems of authority, and so on. In that sense, I’m just doing what Morgan did, but on a larger scale. For as long as I’ve known him, Morgan was what you might consider a vigilante. He’d attempt to provide muscle to the members of his community and establish some semblance of law and order, which is what he considered to be the cornerstone of civilization.

And today, when I came back to see him again, I learned that our old city had been overtaken by a gang enforcing a small-time dictatorship, a relatively common occurrence around the country. Morgan had apparently been bought off by this installment. When I asked him about it, as I found it at least a little strange given his long-standing selflessness, he told me that there was nothing he could do on his own, so there was no point in fighting back. This is more or less what I figured his reasoning was. After all, my life has certainly taught me that regardless of what you want to do from a moral perspective, it’s meaningless if you lack the means to actually make a positive difference.

Long story short, we organized a coup with our combined manpower and technical skills, he was shot and killed in the process, but other than that, the mission was a success. The ruffians were all killed, and the few remaining denizens of the city were liberated.

That is the account of all the time I have ever spent with Morgan. When I saw him die, my brain’s first response was “oh, that’s almost certainly a fatal wound, he’s dead now.” I’m at a bit of a loss for what to do right now. It seems like I should feel something, like, a sadness or an anger or something tangible. In a practical sense, I know that this changes nothing. I’ll simply continue living my life, accomplishing my general goals of making meaningful improvements to the world, so that other people will be better able to cherish the lives that they find precious.

I know that everyone dies eventually, I know that I’m going to die eventually. There’s nothing about this situation that I don’t understand, but it still feels like I should do something. Of course, people die every day, and I don’t stop to mourn them or try to feel something for their loss. However, as far as I know, I’m the only person who will even stop and think about Morgan’s passing. I know that Morgan probably used to have people he cared about. In his personal belongings, he carried around his old wallet and a heart-shaped locket on his person.

It might have been a matter of keeping a sense of his own identity, as I’ve seen many other people do the same thing. I never bothered to investigate the locket, as I didn’t really have much of an interest in Morgan’s personal life. I thought on Morgan as my parent, but I still never really had any interest in him as a person. Looking back on it now, I could easily see some sort of predictable situation where Morgan became more cold and emotionally distant after losing whoever he used to hold dear. It’s not like Morgan was an enigma that defied understanding, I could easily see some simple explanation like that being the case.

But regardless of the things that may or may not have happened that I know nothing about, I do know that I’ve never seen Morgan establish any sort of relationship with other people beyond mundane pleasantries. I know that I’m the only one who could possibly care that he’s gone now. That’s why I’m writing this. I’m writing because I don’t feel anything, I don’t feel loss, I don’t feel grief. I’m writing because it’s my responsibility to care that he’s dead, to validate his life, but it just isn’t happening.

If I don’t mourn him, if I don’t do something, then will he have meant anything in the first place? Of course, there are a lot of people whose lives have been bettered or saved by his actions and his existence, but is that it? Will his life only have meaning as a physical object the affected physical matter, no more important than a piece of food or shelter that was necessary for a life to be saved?

I've had moments before where I felt this same sense of disconnect. I've never experienced a tragedy and felt sorrow, I've only ever seen the practical reality before me. In this case, it feels like an insult. It feels like by not feeling or caring about Morgan's death, that I'm showing indifference to his memory, that I'm insulting his life, or life itself. Of course, just as no one will be here to feel a sense of sorrow, no one will judge me for my indifference either. Only I can judge myself for my own indifference.

I honestly can’t tell if I’m being affected by his passing with this unsettling feeling, or if I care as little as it feels like I care. The thought has crossed my mind that maybe my brain is just deflecting, that it’s all some sort of biological defense mechanism. If that were the case, I’m not sure how I’d even be able to tell. But even if I was going through some temporary period of grief or deflection, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ll just keep going on. I’ll keep living my life, everyone in the world will keep living their lives, the world will keep spinning. Nothing will stop because this one man is dead. Nothing will change, nothing will care. His life was completely expendable to everything and everyone, including me.

When I die, will someone be there to make my life mean something? If so, I’d sure love to know how they’d manage to do that. I know a lot of people find religious beliefs of an afterlife to be a sort of comfort, but I’ve never been able to buy into that line of thinking. To me, death is when the brain stops intaking sensory data, when conscious thought stops running. It’s up to the living, to the rest of the living world to find meaning in the lives of the people who’ve come before.

So selfishly, for the sake of my own life, I need to do something here. I need to find an answer here. I need to give meaning to the man named Morgan, there is no one else who will do it for me.

After hours of going back and forth, this is the solution I’ve arrived at. This diary is all I can think of. I’m the only person who remembers much of anything about Morgan. Once I die, those memories die with me, and then no on in the world will have even the slightest idea of who Morgan was or what he ever did in his life.

If I document everything I know about Morgan, everything I can remember about him, everything I’ve ever personally observed, then at the very least, someone else can come along and find meaning in that documentation. Someone more qualified than myself to grant substance to the past will come along, read what I have written, and at least, they will know that Morgan existed.

Of course, this isn’t a way to transcribe who Morgan actually was into history. Only Morgan will know who Morgan actually was, if even he knew such a thing. This will only express my own interpretation of the things I’ve seen, and by extension, whoever reads this will only grasp their own interpretation of my interpretation of Morgan. But even so, interpretation is all that matters, right? The world only exists through the interpretation of the subject.

I will keep this diary, I’ll write in it every day that I am physically able. I will document everything I can about Morgan, and myself, and everything that crosses my path, and through that documentation, hopefully it will find it’s place in someone’s heart someday. This is all I can do.

I’m sorry, Morgan. I wish I could do better.