From bbe034512bc81a89cc9f29f4ff0f6126d3ad4dc5 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Madison Scott-Clary Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2022 17:25:14 -0700 Subject: [PATCH] update from sparkleup --- writing/post-self/selected-letters/001.html | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/writing/post-self/selected-letters/001.html b/writing/post-self/selected-letters/001.html index 11e7e8ff2..390567731 100644 --- a/writing/post-self/selected-letters/001.html +++ b/writing/post-self/selected-letters/001.html @@ -27,7 +27,7 @@

That was the origin of Sorina. Sorina Bălan, third of our clade, born at sunrise. I took that idea to heart and, when I decided to fork last week, I pushed individuation as hard and as fast as I could. I had a hundred paces to do so, a hundred steps between cairns to make sure that she was herself and that I remained myself.

And yet I’m not sure I did remain myself. A part of me died, and I do not know what to say about that. I pushed individuation on her — and see, here I go, taking her agency from her! — while I did my best to stay the same, to simply walk the prairie and think only of home and of Dear and of █████ and not of Artemis and a life without them. I didn’t think of names. I didn’t think of time skew or forking. I didn’t think of anything but the pending sunrise.

I also didn’t think of forgetting, and I think that’s what got me over the weekend. Sorina and I seem to have been of one mind that we’d give it a bit of time before getting in touch with each other, but she hasn’t left my thoughts since we forked. She can’t leave my thoughts. I can’t forget her.

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But, I realized, she can forget me. She can forget us.

+

But I realized she can forget me. She can forget us.

There may come a day — and I pray that that ‘may’ is accurate, for my sake if nothing else — when she cannot remember Dear, cannot remember any of us, cannot remember why we love the ones we do. For all of the complaints about our impeccable memories, this is one instance that I struggle to see myself living without.

What do I do? How do I live with the life I’ve created for myself? How do I internalize that a part of me has died?

I’m sorry, Ioan. There’s nothing I can do about any of this, and certainly nothing you can do, however many hundreds of billions of kilometers away. I write because there is a sort of stability in you that has rusted in me. It has frozen all of my joints and so I risk cracking while you remain firmly rooted and flexible.

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Pass on my love.