Bad things will happen to you and they won’t be your fault. Life is a miserable shit-show for lots of very good people. Lots of very evil people have it easy in life. When bad things happen, it doesn’t help to blame yourself, or wish you’d done something differently, or shake your fists at the sky. Accept that the bad things happened, but do not allow them to continue to hurt you.
Bad things will also happen to you that will be your fault. Part of being Better is being able to tell the difference.
DAY: -28
TOTAL CALORIES, APPROX.: 1950
I wish I could tell you that from the moment I entered the hospital, I was strong enough to stop using my abilities altogether. I wish I was brave enough to turn my back on them. But I wasn’t.
About a month after I arrived, when the lights went out in the hallway and us crazies settled into our lonely beds, I thought to myself, How is Mom doing? Has she stopped drinking? Is Maya helping her?
And once the thought entered my head, it refused to leave.
Find her, it said. Go to her. Help her.
I shut my eyes and tried to smell her. Hear her. Teleport to her bedside. Tap into the unstoppable force I used to be able to control.
All that happened was my jaw locked up. When ten minutes passed, and it hadn’t unlocked, I pressed the button to call the nurse, and she gave me something to help me sleep, and in the morning my jaw was fine.
I thought a lot about my friend Darryl. The one who’d abandoned me. I’d taken it so personally, convinced myself that he’d come to hate me, that something was wrong with me. But that wasn’t true. He’d moved on because of him. Because he wanted different things. Because his life was bigger than video games and comic books; because it was easier to find a new life and friends than to be sad about the life and friends he’d lost.
I’d been furious, back when Maya turned five and went to kindergarten. I’d thrown a fit. I couldn’t understand how she could leave me alone, but of course it had nothing to do with me.
My sickness made everything about me. My sickness and my selfishness. And the fact that I was still a kid who didn’t understand how the world really works.
My powers had come from anger, from hate, from fear, from shame. I had fed them; I let them take me over. And now that I’d turned my back on them, I had nothing.
So, every night I tried again—and failed. And sometimes, but not every time, I wept. Like a man who’d lost both legs or gone blind. What could be more painful than to possess something wonderful and then lose it forever?