Oo, new notebook! Where did this come from? Literally don't remember picking it up anywhere, but I am digging this paper, damn. Either a ghost dropped this on my spares shelf, or M must have gotten it. Thanks, M. If you can see this, you rock.

Okay, I've got a frank question. What if souls are real? Like, what would be the actual implications, other than the whole afterlife thing? Not that the afterlife is unimportant, but you know what I mean. I'm thinking more along the lines of stuff like... what if depression is just a really, really tired soul? Would souls even get tired, or do they get some sort of cosmic spa treatment and a long vacation every time they head back into the aether to get recycled into another body? I dunno about them, but doing that for all eternity sounds pretty exhausting to me. Maybe that's why so many people are so messed up.

And then there's ghosts. Seriously, what are ghosts? They're one of those things that science hasn't proven, but so many people claim to have seen them, and so many cultures have stories about them that you start to wonder, y'know? Or maybe that's just me, who knows. Anyway. Ghosts and souls seems like a logical connection. Which means either the super cliche "ghosts are souls that have unresolved business on earth" is true, or something else is. Can you imagine it being something so totally bonkers that nobody on earth has thought of it yet? M would appreciate that.

I wouldn't want to be a ghost. Honestly, just thinking about this kind of stuff makes me wonder if I've got any unfinished business on earth, which... yeah. But I don't want to be a ghost. Please don't make me a ghost. I don't want to watch the end of humanity, still wandering the world in search of...

Ugh.

Okay yes, this is the third thing I've been wondering about with respect to souls being real. What if soulmates are real? Like, a real, actual thing? And what if all the stories and tropes and cliches are correct here, too, and soulmates are I dunno your lover from a past life, or two eternal souls bound together but constantly being ripped apart because life is finite, sometimes before they can even find each other again? Or after they find each other, but not for long? Forced to watch their lover die, over and over and over again?

See? Messed-up people. This would explain a lot of things.

I feel like the world is a story. One long, endless novel whose author never figured out when to stop writing, and who long ago lost the original plot. Or maybe they have a plan after all. Who am I to say?

And it's all a story, and I'm just a character going around meeting other characters, searching for the love who died with me in a past life. We were an old couple, saying "I'll meet you again on the other side." Maybe there is no afterlife. Maybe there is no spa treatment or vacation for souls. Maybe we just keep coming back, over and over, wandering the earth in search of our lost loved ones, not realizing or knowing why we wander. Maybe that's why some people are restless. It's hard to keep starting over, always back to square one, building from the ground up again.

Maybe ghosts are people too scared to hit the reset button and lose everything again.

Okay, that got dark. Leave me alone, M. I'm trying to journal here.

So this is my journal now. I'm sitting in bed right as I write this; just got home from that same conference I told you about last time. Journaling because I finished my last notebook midway through the conference, and if I don't get this stuff out of my head, I'm going to explode. Maybe literally. And I don't want to explode because that's weird and I'd rather not be weird in public. There's a reason I try to channel all my weird in here instead. Get it out of my system so I can function in normal society. Nobody's going to see me here except M.

What even is "normal"? Like, seriously. People are so weird. Society is so weird. Which it probably isn't, and that's probably why I'm weird to society, but I can't get it out of my head. W h a t i s n o r m a l. That is one question that haunts my dreams. Sometimes literally. I've been trying to understand it for so many years, and it still doesn't make sense. Maybe "normal" is just whatever I'm not.

That's... not a bad assessment, actually.

Ugh again.

Normal is that thing people find or reach or learn or are just born with (probably born with) that makes good things happen to them. Normal people get jobs. Well... okay, this economy is messed up and many normal people are not getting jobs. But normal people get the chance to get jobs that don't reject them because they struggle to hold eye contact, or they do weird things with their hands in the job interview. Normal people don't get picked last for gym class or math projects. Normal people make friends. See? Everything that's not me. And that is why I'm weird.

I'm blaming you, M. Just so you know.

If I'm going to be a soul at the end of this life, I want to choose where I'm going. Which means I want there to be a heaven, I guess, but not the kind that's a golden city or a bunch of fluffy clouds and winged people playing harps for eternity. I want to go where Gemwing comes from. See? She's perched on the back of my chair right now. Hi, Gemwing. I'm journaling. But you can't read this because I made you so you couldn't, so I'm just going to...

There. Said hi to Gemwing, and now she's on my lap looking very pleased with herself, and I'm writing over her lil' pointy wings. Sorry for the messy handwriting. I now understand how cat owners feel. She's warm, though, so I'm not complaining.

Anyway, I want to go where she came from. One, because it has dragons (obviously) but also, they're so much easier than humanity? Like, easier to understand. Gemwing just wants to lie on my shoulder or sit in my lap and be obstructive while I'm journaling, except when she sees something shiny. Or food. Life is simple when you're a dragon.

But I have to get there first, and that means getting through this life, and maybe actually enjoying it a little. Good things will come. I promise.

(Please let good things come)

X/M here, signing off. Or maybe just X. Not sure where M is right now.

Goodnight, love. I love you.