I have barely seen time pass these past few months. Leaving home at 8 to come back from university at 11 pm at best feels weird, I don’t have the time to think or exteriorize anymore. In some way it feels great to be able to do something productive, to work and have a busy schedule.
I thought I was slowly turning insane without the structure and activity I got used to in the army. Weird to think that when I used to value my liberty and independence so much, yet it feels somehow right to regret my time as captain Levi more than the years before that. At least there I had a purpose, as futile as it turned out to be in the end.
Yet, as I got my first free weekend in weeks, I felt like I could finally breathe. After barely seeing the sky and breathing real oxygen, I felt the wind on my skin, smelled fresh air, and it almost hurt how for a few seconds it felt like I was back in the Survey Corps. I felt like myself for the first time in what felt like so long, and I almost forgot I wasn’t home, I wasn’t myself anymore.
It’s bittersweet. As much as my life back then could almost be called hell on earth, I was me. I had an illusion of freedom I clung to like I needed it to breathe. It felt so real, it was so real to me, and this world is just like a bad dream I will soon wake up from.
It hurts that it only took a day without my insane student schedule to bring these thoughts back to the front of my head. They were always there, in the back, but I pushed them down as I couldn’t afford to get distracted from my studies by such melancholic remembrance. But the moment I finally could sleep for a full night, the moment I could stop and breathe and look at the nature around me, the thoughts and memories came back full force to hit right where it hurts.
I miss who I was. I miss my friends, my comrades, my charges. I don’t recognize this world as mine, only snippets of it feel real. I wish I could at least openly live as myself instead of cosplaying as someone I am not just for the sake of others.