Sometimes I wonder, you know, what other people’s lives are like. People who’ve grown up in a solid home, people with a decent future, people with long lives ahead of them. Do they realize just how good they have it? How often do they just laugh with the sheer joy of it all?

I wonder sometimes, if they value what an incredible, priceless thing it is to laugh. To truly laugh, and smile. Laughter, I think, is the most important ability a person could ever, ever have. Nothing in my life has ever felt as good as a laugh.

When I laugh, I live in the present, the most beautiful state in the world. Irreplaceable loved ones didn’t die, agonizingly traumatic events didn’t occur, and nothing can hurt you, as long as you’re alive. Likewise, the future, usually as unfathomable as an endless hole, simply doesn’t exist. Which is sometimes the best of all possible states.

My greatest fear, I think, is for it to become just too much. The killing to catch up to me, to swallow me whole. To see Sister Helen’s face, and Father Maxwell, in every enemy cockpit, screaming through the engulfing flames. To see the hard, merciless faces of the OZ soldiers, reflected on every hard, merciless gun. The present, the laughter, keeps my reality at bay.

Slaughtering the enemy, watching their soldiers fall. My only choice is to shut it all out, to fill my world with the adrenalin rush of adventure, and the moments when my cunning saves my friends. I can’t hear their screams, I can’t let myself hear their screams, or they’ll drown out what’s important in life. The good things. However small.

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