#yellowjacketsep

How's this story for you? Once upon a time, a bunch of teenage girls got stranded in the Wilderness, and they went completely fucking nuts. They worshipped evil spirits, and they hunted their friends, and they feasted on their flesh, and they fucking liked it. So they told themselves stupid fairy tales and pretended they were brave and strong. Because the reality was that even if rescue came, they could never go home again. Because of what they'd done. Because of what they'd become. That's the truth.

I've tried for years to remember what happened out there, to understand why it seemed like I couldn't remember so much of it. Why none of us could. I'm finally starting to realize, we can't remember it because at some point we became so alive in that place that we lost our capacity for self-reflection. The trauma people say survivors forget things to protect themselves because they were so horrible, but I think we can't or won't remember it clearly because we recognize, deep down, that we were having so much fun. That's the terrible truth we left out there, buried. Along with the people we called our friends.

On this shortest night of the year, we gather to honor three souls that have slipped into the darkness that lasts forever. We celebrate their sacrifice. We grieve their loss. And rejoice at the knowledge that they're still here with us. We know that they are because we can still hear them. Because we can still feel them. Because they haven't gone. They've just returned to a place that waits for all of us. Now with the Wilderness, guide us. Now with the Wilderness, deliver us.

Repeat after me. I vow by the Wilderness to honor Its virtue with my own. What It asks, I will answer. What It says, I will listen.

Think of how screwed up we would be if we had survived a plane crash, only to end up eating each other.