~• Jonathan Crane's Journal •~

Dated: January, 2018

For the past many days, I have not been able to write anything. A tempest of words rages in my mind, yet each time I try to capture it on paper, my pen fails to comply with the cyclone of my thoughts.

All the voices inside my head have faded into white noise, a whizzing in the background that I can no longer interpret. White like the snowflakes smothering the window panes, clinging stubbornly onto the sidewalks until the rain washes them out in bleak puddles.

My thoughts have also frozen, it seems, accumulating in the corners of my mind, waiting for an unexpected torrent of rain to wash them out so that I can bleed on paper again. Now, each time I sit with my journal, I stare at the blank pages, feeling as if whatever I want to write is already there.

The more I look at it, the more it seems that the plain white represents what I feel inside.

A blank sheet of paper not very unlike my mind most of the time. Just plain emptiness staring back at me from the hall of mirrors my conscience has become. No matter what mirror I look through, it shows nothing, just a hollow shell of myself staring back with empty blue eyes.

Sometimes the blue of my eyes also seems to fade into white, as if a smoke shrouds me at all times, making it hard to differentiate between reality and reflection.

Perhaps it is due to the medicines I was prescribed to keep myself calm. They erase everything from existence that could agitate me, blurring them out until all I feel is a numb hollowness. Or perhaps it is an aftereffect of the drug Timothy made for me that I have to take in small doses.

I still remember the haunting silence it subjected me to the first time Tim administered it to me. The deadly call of the grave I heard back then still beckons me closer in my nightmares, screaming soundlessly each time I close my eyes.

Whatever the reason, all those words that tormented me earlier have become incoherent. I still hear them but fail to understand what is being said. While I should relax that I am not being tortured again by those sharp-edged thoughts, they have somehow blended into my normal, and their absence is hard to get accustomed to.

All I can do to fill that void is to absorb as many words as possible from conversations around me and from people I get to interact with. However, most of the time, the words I get to consume are nothing short of meaningless.

To escape my peril, I have started spending more time with Isaac. Though he is not talkative, he often gives me some thoughts of his own to ponder, quenching my thirst for words for a short while.

Sometimes, I sit with the rest of our colleagues, listening to their mundane chatter and trying to imagine life from their perspective. But each time, I fail to picture it due to its stark disparity. It contrasts so strikingly with the hollow existence I embody that I'm immensely surprised at how different people can be from one another.

Living in the same world yet leading such different lives that it seems all of us are characters, our stories mingled into one confusing vortex. Each of us a solitary raindrop coming together to form the deep wide ocean with no end and no origin.

Or perhaps this void has widened as I have gotten old, even though I tell Timothy off for suggesting it. Perhaps all these years have finally caught up with me, with my memory rusting, and my thoughts getting lost in a whirlpool of unidentified currents.

The white noise I hear might be the sign of old age, of years lapsing methodically with the power to turn black into gray and gray into white. Just like the streaks losing their color in my hair, I find my thoughts bleaching out as well.

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Recently, I borrowed some books from Doctor Fischer, slowly easing into my hobby of book reading. In the past years, I had been so preoccupied that I almost forgot the silent pleasure of getting lost in the pages of a good book, focusing my eyes on the trailing ink patterns until I had fed every single word into my mind.

Growing up, I never had much of an appetite for food. Instead, I used to be gluttonous for books and knowledge, devouring all I could and poring my eyes over the pages until black spots clouded my vision from excessive strain. But somewhere along the way, that hunger subsided, replaced with the thirst for power and control that led me to my eventual damnation.

Years later, I find myself with the time and liberty to read books again. Of everything that has happened since my release so far, this possibility seems the least daunting.

All I have to do is find a peaceful spot, either at home or at work, take out one of those borrowed books, find the page I left reading on, and then get lost in it all over again.

It is strangely comforting to read again and familiarize myself with views that I had almost forgotten about. Most of the things I read are stored somewhere in my brain already, locked behind doors that I threw the key away to in a fit of madness.

Reading books again is no different from crafting that long-lost key, fitting it in the keyhole, and scraping its metal until it achieves the right shape to turn in the lock.

Maybe someday I will be able to push that door open. But I am not so certain whether I want to unlock the doors from my past.

Each time I think about it, a dreaded possibility lingers of encountering my past self through these doors. But who exactly was my past self?

The timid boy, Jon who was bullied for being too skinny and too useless? Or the Scarecrow himself who embodied fear and wielded it as a weapon against all without discrimination?

Who was I, and who did I become?

Who am I now after all I have endured?

Sadly, the answers to these questions keep eluding me. The more I think about it, the more my self-perception blurs. I remember everything from my past, but I don't remember myself, no matter how absurd it sounds.

Now, I try to forget my present, but it sticks to me like a shadow. At times, I feel like a ghost living in this body, only carrying out my routine tasks for the sake of passing yet another day in this string of years comprising the remainder of my life.

When have I ever felt alive as Jonathan Crane?

Not as Jon. Not as Scarecrow. But as myself.

As Jonathan.

I sift through my memories to find an answer, but only these frosty snowflakes cloud my vision as I dig deeper. The mirrors of my mind have fogged over and everywhere I look, splatters of ivory cover the surface.

This wretched white noise keeps raging on in my head.

Nothing else but white noise.

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