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abetterlieDefine "strong". I guess it's true in one sense, the way my father used to believe it. You've got to learn fast in a hell dimension, or you die, when you're lucky, or you're kept alive for some time as something's food supply or toy. There's no time to coddle a child or fool around or anything like that. If he had raised me that way, well, he wouldn't have raised me at all. There wouldn't be even bones left.
So he did what he had to. You don't make a child understand just by saying "don't". And if you're surrounded by monsters, you have to make it clear you're every bit as tough as they are.
The thing is, this completely worked in the sense that I made it out of Quortoth alive, and that I'm good at fighting till this day. But I don't know about strong. I mean, let's face it, strong people don't go to pieces and go crazy and try to kill themselves and blow malls with people up while they're at it. Strong people find a way to keep their child alive somehow. Angel did it for me, and I couldn't do it for Jasmine, I couldn't find a way to help her with the pain she was in except to kill her.Strong people don't have violence as their drug of choice, full stop.
So no. It didn't make me strong in that sense. Perhaps it was the basic material, but sometimes it just makes you completely fucked up.
But on the other hand, the next time I lost family and was in a pretty bad place, I didn't go for a repeat performance. Which was partly because by then, I had memories of making my parents believe I still believed in the Easter Bunny so they'd keep on hiding chocolate eggs at Easter, of learning to swim in an ocean that nobody ever dumped anyone into, and of getting into a shell collecting competition with Mere. I don't care whether they're fake, they're real to me. And partly because I had got it into my thick head by then there were still other people around who needed me. And whom I needed. So if that means I had gotten a bit stronger, it wasn't because of stuff that almost killed me. It was because of having had the chance to be weak.
So he did what he had to. You don't make a child understand just by saying "don't". And if you're surrounded by monsters, you have to make it clear you're every bit as tough as they are.
The thing is, this completely worked in the sense that I made it out of Quortoth alive, and that I'm good at fighting till this day. But I don't know about strong. I mean, let's face it, strong people don't go to pieces and go crazy and try to kill themselves and blow malls with people up while they're at it. Strong people find a way to keep their child alive somehow. Angel did it for me, and I couldn't do it for Jasmine, I couldn't find a way to help her with the pain she was in except to kill her.
So no. It didn't make me strong in that sense. Perhaps it was the basic material, but sometimes it just makes you completely fucked up.
But on the other hand, the next time I lost family and was in a pretty bad place, I didn't go for a repeat performance. Which was partly because by then, I had memories of making my parents believe I still believed in the Easter Bunny so they'd keep on hiding chocolate eggs at Easter, of learning to swim in an ocean that nobody ever dumped anyone into, and of getting into a shell collecting competition with Mere. I don't care whether they're fake, they're real to me. And partly because I had got it into my thick head by then there were still other people around who needed me. And whom I needed. So if that means I had gotten a bit stronger, it wasn't because of stuff that almost killed me. It was because of having had the chance to be weak.
