Better

I'm over that cold. It was really bad, and really poorly timed...I've got the notebook up, by the way. I did it two days ago but forgot to make a post. It's on another page, the link's above this entry in the title bar.

When I wrote the last post...I was kind of delirious, miserable, guilty. I'm not in the same frame of mind now- more just tired and...I don't know, blank. Like nothing is happening- nothing good, nothing bad. And nothing has happened. I didn't even remember what I was trying to remember last time I posted.

I do have some things to say about the notebook. I still haven't given it to the police because I don't know what to say, but they'll want it. And somehow I don't want to give it up. I feel like I have to keep it near me, like it's my last link to my friend. I can trace the marks her pen made, I can turn the surprisingly well preserved pages and feel like she's still talking to me, gossiping about a hipster boy she kissed, playing tic-tac-toe with a little kid.
Calling for help.

I don't know if I'll ever get over the fact that I didn't believe her. I keep wondering, if I'd listened, if I'd gone on the run with her, would she still be alive? Would Harriet (which has to be H's real name) have taken her? Could we have looked out for each other or would we both be dead with nothing to show for it, not even someone to remember us and know the truth?

She was trying to protect me. Even at the very end, she was trying to save me, and I fucking jumped right in after her, making all these mistakes...and the symbol's useless. All this time I thought it was...I don't know, like showing the sign of the cross to a vampire. It made the monster go away. But what do you do if there's no way to defeat the monster? What if the monster always gets you in the end?
And you know what? Fuck this. Names, symbols, codes, notebooks..it doesn't matter. We die. We die and we keep dying and we turn into monsters ourselves and none of these safety measures are working, nothing is stopping the Slender Man so fuck it, I'm going to call it by its name. It's not as if not saying those two words has kept it away.

I'm sorry, I'm just...I'll be more cheerful tomorrow. I'll keep my head up and start working on solving codes or something, some way forward. I'll be a ray of fucking sunshine. But not today. I just can't.