#ben lore

Anyway, I need to do the psych tests because essentially we’re trying to find out if Snoke is real, or if I just made him up in my head. Mom says that some people get hallucinations, or have trouble distinguishing imagination from reality, and that causes them to experience things that don’t actually exist. She thinks there’s a possibility I might fall under that category; that Snoke might actually be a created figment in my mind.

I don’t know which reality is scarier, to be honest. A living, breathing supreme being with violating mind-invasion powers, or my own diseased brain tricking me into pledging allegiance to the broken neurons within... Either way, I finally realize now that Snoke—whether real or imaginary—was guiding me down a road of destruction from the very beginning.

Yeah, I know. Took me long enough to figure that out. I’m a kriffing idiot.

But actually...it wasn’t something I “figured out,” because deep down, I knew it all along. I denied the truth, because I yearned for protection and security beyond what mere mortals could offer me. I truly did love Snoke. He really did feel safe to me, in spite of all the pain, and even now, part of me still has feelings for him, but...well...we all know where that led me. I can’t love him anymore...

I know this is going to sound incredibly cliched, but although I strongly recommend not dying if you can...almost dying has really changed my perspective. For years, you guys have been trying to tell me that my parents love me and would do anything for me, but I was never able to let myself believe it till now.

When I woke up in the hospital and saw my parents there, I was so scared. I hadn’t expected ever having to face them again. “I’m a terrible son”—those were the first words out of my mouth. But I never got to finish the train of thought, because all of a sudden Mom and Dad cried “He’s awake!” and rushed at me and hugged me and kissed me and wept on me and the medical droids were trying to rein them back in to give me more air.

But I couldn’t return their embrace. While they were weeping with joy, I was crying in fear. I knew their happiness wouldn’t last—it would subside eventually, and then the punishment would come. I kept waiting for the stern lecture, the slap in the face, the “how dare you do this to us,” the “you’re grounded for the rest of your life,” the storm after the calm, you know?

But...that storm never came. When they finally stepped back, it was to say “We have presents for you.” Dad had bought a whole stack of holobooks from the gift shop for me to read, and Mom handed me a coloring book filled with funny illustrations of banthas. I know, silly stuff, but...my heart broke, and I started sobbing.

I mean...it just didn’t make any sense. I kriffing run away, and scare everyone out of their wits, and put myself in danger, and trade my father’s blaster for death sticks, and nearly kill myself, and wind up in the hospital so my parents have to pay for medical care, and my parents...what do they do? They greet me with love and warmth, and have presents waiting for me when I come out of unconsciousness.

I just couldn’t understand it.

Okay, I thought, frantically trying to work this all out in my head, but they only love me because they don’t know about Snoke. Maybe my memory is messed up, and they never actually found out about him after all. There’s no way they’d be this nice to me if they knew the truth.

And at the exact same time I’m thinking this, Mom takes my hand and says, “Ben, you don’t have to deal with anything alone anymore. If you ever feel like Snoke or Leader or whomever is trying to talk to you, please—don’t be afraid to tell us. We’re going to help you.”

I was so stunned, I passed out again.

When I came to, and Mom and Dad were still there, I found that...for the first time in months...I was really able to believe my parents loved me. And I didn’t just know it, the way you know one plus one equals two—I felt it in my soul. With no doubts whatsoever.

I hadn’t felt that way in a long time. It scared me.

“Aren’t you mad at me?” I asked my mom, almost wishing she would be angry just so I could know I wasn’t crazy. “Even a little bit?”

“How could I be?” she smiled, tears in her eyes. “My son was lost, but now he’s found. It’s like you’ve come back from the dead, Ben. This is the hospital you were born in—it’s almost like you’ve been given to me all over again. And baby, I love you just as much as I did the day they first handed you to me.”

Wow. I’m not gonna lie—I was crying some very unmanly tears. The more I think about it...I really do feel as if I’ve been reborn.

It’s gonna be a couple of weeks before they let me out of here...I really screwed myself up. I didn’t eat, drink, or sleep for four days, and then on the fourth day I felt worse than I’d ever felt in my life, so I got desperate and tried to down a whole bunch of death sticks. I immediately got sick and threw up most of it, but whatever chemicals did absorb into my system were enough to send me on a nasty drug trip and almost poison me, so yeah.

I mean...it did make me feel really, really good. For about three minutes. But then it was like being plunged into a morbid fever nightmare. Anyway...the good feelings felt exactly like when Leader—I mean, Snoke would take away my pain, and that’s what the experience made me think of... I don’t know if this sounds weird, but...I guess in a lot of ways, Snoke was my drug.

That was my first encounter with anything stronger than caf, and I’m never doing drugs again, dude. I feel like garbage. All the annoying sobriety campaigns were right. I mean, I’m actually hooked up to a low-effect synthetic right now, because otherwise I’ll go into shock and die, but after that I’m never putting anything weird in my body ever again.

Fannie holocommed me after she found out I was awake. She was crying and trying to explain why she had done what she’d done, and telling me how glad she was to see I was okay.

“I know it was a violation of your privacy for me to do what I did,” she said, “but—”

“—it was the right thing to do,” I finished on instinct, and then stared dumbly. The words had just jumped out of my mouth without me thinking about it. Did I really believe that? I didn’t know if I recognized myself.

I hadn’t seen Fannie for two weeks. During that time she had begun to fade from my heart, because I’d thought we could never be reconciled. But Fannie had never given up on me, and she showed far more concern for me than I deserved out of our relationship. The last time we spoke, I hit her in the face, and yet...here she was, still wanting to be friends, and still caring about me as much as if I was her own brother.

“Why do you still like me?” I asked her. “I’m one of the worst people I know.”

“I try to make a habit of loving people who don’t deserve it,” she smiled. “And you may have done some things, but it’s never too late for a heart to change. You’re a good man, Ben. If you want that to be true, it can be.”

I’m kinda coming to a close now, and this is where I get to the part that maybe you as my audience don’t particularly want to hear.

Mom doesn’t want me to blog for a while. After all the...drama that’s surrounded me in the past few days, she says it would be better for me to lay low. And even after I get out of the medcenter, she thinks I need to start cutting back on the time I spend on the HoloNet.

“It’s not the healthiest way to live. No offense, but you need to make some real friends,” she said.

“My friends are real friends,” I said. “Just because they’re spread out all across the galaxy doesn’t mean they’re not real.”

But...I guess I see her point. Sometimes you just need to take a break, and focus on what’s right in front of you. I probably want to invest some time in rebuilding my relationship with my parents. Maybe go back to therapy. Not to mention there’s the whole issue of Snoke, whether he’s real or not, and find out how to deal with all that... How to deal with it the right way, this time.

...You know what? For all the people who warned me against trusting Snoke, there were always those few people affirming my relationship with him. Telling me that whatever I wanted to do was right, that Snoke was good for me as long as I believed he was, and that ultimately I should follow my own heart. And even though that was the advice I loved, and the advice that made me feel good, it didn’t help me in any capacity. It just allowed me to feel like I was doing the right thing, when I was very obviously hurting myself.

I guess what I’m saying is...the HoloNet is an excellent thing. But...sometimes it can be a danger. Since I poured myself and all my secrets into the HoloNet, I thought I could get away with never revealing the truth to my parents. Whenever I received advice from the HoloNet, I picked and chose whatever advice tasted best to me. On the HoloNet, I was able to find what I would never find in real life—anonymous individuals who could affirm my every stupid decision and tell me whatever I wanted to hear. Unconditional love wasn’t enough for me; I wanted unconditional affirmation.

Anyway, what this is all leading up to is that...I might take a hiatus soon. A longer hiatus. Maybe spanning a few months. I just need to get away so I can spend some time thinking and reevaluating and getting myself to trust my family again...

I’ll hang around long enough to answer any questions about what’s happened over the past few days, but after that, you and I may be parting ways for a while.

Oh, yeah, one more thing. Last night I felt really weird, and I was scared that I was going to die after all. Nothing was wrong with me, but I felt an emptiness, an absence, a lack. I was trying to explain it to my mom—I kept on saying “There’s something missing, I feel so still, my head and heart feel so slow, my mind is so quiet, nothing seems as threatening as it should be, I don’t feel as worried as I should be, what’s wrong with me?”

My mother gently put a hand to my forehead. “Ben,” she laughed quietly, “you’re at peace. Haven’t you ever felt like this before?”

“No,” I said with surprise.

“Well, I hope you get to feel this way more often in the future,” she replied, and kissed me.

I hope so, too.

May the Force be with you.

Because I was scared into silence, I found myself handing her all these words that weren’t mine. Yet they pained me all the same. When I let go of the holopad…dropped it into her lap…I sunk to the floor and covered my face in my hands and tried my hardest not to feel like the galaxy was imploding, with me at the very center.

As she was reading, all I could think was that I’d made a terrible mistake. The seconds seemed to drag on forever. What killed me most was the fact that I didn’t know what she was going to do.

But when she had finally finished reading…she didn’t interrogate me or run out of the room or even act surprised. The first thing that happened was she got down on the floor to face me, and she hugged me without saying a word.

The warmth in the action was a power like nothing I had ever known before. I choked back a sob.

“I’ve got so many stashes of tissues in here; you don’t even know. Cry if you need to,” she commanded gently. “It’s okay to mourn.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant. I didn’t know what I was mourning, or what she thought I was mourning. The loss of my innocence? As if I had ever had any. But she pushed a box of tissues toward me, and I followed the instruction anyway.

“You’re very brave for telling me this,” she said. “I…don’t have all the answers, and in fact I don’t fully know what you’re talking about…but I can tell you one thing: pushing yourself out of secrecy is always a step toward the light.”

I nodded faintly.

“Help me to understand. Is it a voice, or a person?”

“…Both.”

“You said it’s a man?”

“It’s…it’s something like a man.”

“Does he have a name?”

My mouth opened to say ‘Leader,’ but I hesitated. Tears filled my eyes as I lowered my head.

“…S…Snoke.”

“What?”

“Snoke,” I whispered, feeling dizzy. “His name is Snoke.”

It was the first time I had ever spoken his name—his true name—out loud. I had always known it, somehow; a whispering echo in my dreams and a heartbeat in my head—but even when I had finally come to know him, he had never permitted me to call him by it. It was a privilege I had never earned, but one he’d promised I would one day have, when I had risen enough in his eyes. To say it so freely—especially without proper preface or title—was insolence, and an assumption of entitlement.

More than that, hearing his name out loud, and coming from my own lips, shocked me. It was as if his existence had only been a dream until now. But I had woken up, and the dream had not ended—this was my horrid reality.

“Snoke,” Fannie repeated pensively.

“Don’t say it anymore,” I begged, almost afraid he would be summoned by the mere mention of his name. “Please.”

“Are you going to be okay if I ask you some questions about him?”

I shook my head.

She considered me for a moment. Then she set my holopad aside and retrieved a non-digital journal from her table, along with an ink pen.

“How about this…can I write you some questions about him? And then you can write your answers back?”

I licked my lips slowly.

“…Okay.”

So that’s what we did, for the better half of the night.

…I told her a lot of things I hadn’t told anyone before. Once I got started, it just came rushing out…as if, maybe, I’d actually been dying to reveal it after all. And it hurt. It hurt like heck to tear down my carefully-constructed walls and lay myself bare. But it hurt like ripping off a bandage…somehow, there was relief in the pain.

I can’t recount all the things we wrote back and forth in that book of hers. But finally, the questions stopped.

“You should get some sleep,” she said. “Since your parents are coming.”

“I don’t think I can.”

“Well, you should.”

“I’m really not going to sleep tonight.”

“Okay, Ben.”

She closed her journal, and for a moment, all my secrets were once again safely hidden. Except they weren’t, because Fannie had every single one; they were all in her head…

“Either I’m going to have to kill you, or you’re going to have to become my best friend now,” I blurted, my voice distorted with nerves. It was a stupid thing to say, but I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.

Fannie gave a slight smile. “Let’s go for the latter.”

She paused, then cast her gaze away from me. “I suppose that means you won’t be telling your family about this any time soon? Because…they would be able to help you much better than I can, and you know that, Ben. You can’t hide the truth.” She took my hand. “And I can’t keep your secrets, sweetie. Especially not one as big as this.”

“You have to,” I pleaded. “If you tell Luke or anyone else…my life is over.”

She took a tissue and patted it to my wet cheeks, first one and then the other.

“Think about it, Ben. I’ve only known you for a week, and what you’ve told me really doesn’t change my opinions toward you. But your family has known and loved you your entire life. Do you really think their reactions will be any worse than mine? Do you really think they won’t want to help you? Why are you so afraid?”

“I don’t know, but I am, and you can’t tell anyone, or I will kill you,” I said, dropping her hand and fixing her with a terrified glare.

It was an empty threat, and we both knew it. I could tell she wasn’t afraid of me.

I looked down at the floor.

“It makes me very sad to hear that, Ben,” Fannie murmured. “You know just as well as I do that you’ll only find a way out of this if you tell your parents and Luke.” She put her fingers beneath my chin and lifted my head, forcing me to look at her again. “Or…is it that you don’t want a way out? It seems to me you still have feelings for Snoke.”

I didn’t say anything.

She sighed softly.

“Ben…you don’t need me to tell you that the situation you’re in isn’t a good one. You already know that. And until you acknowledge that, this is going to be you for a long time.” She poked my nose. “Crying and conflicted and miserable.”

“…Who cares, as long as I’m the only one getting hurt?” I mumbled.

“But you’re not,” she objected, and for the first time in the conversation, I did begin to sense fear in her. It was mingled amidst her kindness, but it was there.

“No offense…but…are you really that blind?” she asked. “Do you really have no idea why someone might be trying to take ownership of you like this…? You’re a Skywalker, Ben. Have you ever heard that history repeats itself? When we had that conversation earlier about Anakin, I was so confused why someone like you would seem to have an admiration for Darth Vader. But now I understand. You are Vader. Or at least Snoke wants you to be.”

Something inside me began to shrink and harden and close. I felt like I was being accused.

“…I told you not to say his name.”

“I’ll say his name,” Fannie said sternly. “The only way to kill a monster is to call it by its name.”

“He’s not a monster,” I snapped with newfound energy. “And you’re wrong. Leader isn’t trying to take ownership of me. He wants to make me into who I was meant to become.”

“And who exactly are you meant to become?”

“Someone powerful. Someone who will do great and wonderful things,” I answered. “Isn’t that what you want to become, as well? Isn’t that why you’re training to become a Jedi?”

“I am a Jedi, and a Jedi doesn’t seek power,” Fannie said, her every word as bright and hot as a star. “I’m a Jedi because I want to do good and help people. Is that what you want to do?”

“I don’t want to do good,” I told her angrily. “I want to do what’s best.”

She frowned.

“If you are not serving good, then you are serving evil,” she said firmly.

…It happened before I could think.

It was like being struck by lightning. All at once, rage overtook me and consumed me like a flame. I hated her more than I hated anything in the galaxy, and my hatred burned to my fingertips.

I slapped her in the face. Hard.

…She inhaled sharply, but otherwise didn’t react. Her frown settled a little deeper; that was it.

“My point exactly,” she whispered, her eyes becoming wet with the sting of my hand. “You’re not the only person getting hurt by your relationship with Snoke, Ben. It’s going to hurt everyone you love. You’re going to hurt everyone you love. And if this is really as dangerous as I think it is…you could end up destroying everything your family fought for.

“Now, please…go back to your room so we can both get some sleep, and don’t talk to me until you’re ready to tell your family about Snoke. And please don’t ever hit me like that again.” Without looking away from me, she blinked the tears out of her eyes. “It reminds me of things I’d rather forget.”

“I’m sorry I did that,” I said, trembling as I stood. “But if you won’t talk to me unless I tell my family, I think you can expect to never speak to me again.”

I grabbed my holopad and ran off into the night.

Fannie and I didn’t talk to each other this morning. We didn’t even look at each other. I didn’t introduce her to my mom, and I didn’t say goodbye to her when I left. I only glanced at her briefly, just as I was boarding the Falcon and everyone was waving farewell.

She was wearing a knitted cowl to hide my handprint on her face.

When I got home, I deleted her communication info from both my holocomm and my holopad. And then I cried. I’ve been crying all day. Except all I can think of is her voice saying “it’s okay to mourn” and the way she patted tissue on my face.

I told my parents I had a terrible, awful time at school and that I never want to go back, ever.