Day one of this journal.
Took five weeks of counseling for me to finally pick up the voice recorder. Always had excuses. Too busy. Too busy. Too busy. I guess it's really one excuse, in a thousand variations.
Here goes.
...and I can't do this. My mind isn't calming down. Can't remember the last time it was calm. Trunks, get it together. Focus on one goddamn thing for once.
Dr. Hayden says I don't have to talk coherently. Just talk it out. Talk my thoughts out of a spiral when she's not there to do it for me, and I can share these entries with her or I don't have to.
I'm rambling like a child.
Alright. Let me try again.
I'll talk about one of my escapes. The place my mind goes when I'm too exhausted to move and still I can't sleep, when the Rourke project falls behind once again or the reporters want another piece of me. Or they announce they're putting up a new statue of me in some town in the middle of Bumblefuck. Or those honorary degrees all these universities keep tossing at me.
I'm rambling on the negatives. Reel it in, come back to what's not negative. It's hard to think of what's not negative. What's positive?
What's positive is: the cyborgs are dead. They've been dead ten years. The world is no longer dying a slow death by killer robots. I still dream of them, but at least now when I wake up, I know they're dead.
What's positive is: the world is rebuilding. Recovering from half its population getting wiped out. What they don't like to say anymore is that a quarter of the population died from our own stupid attempts to fight the cyborgs. Entire countries erased from the map, still uninhabitable from nuclear radiation.
That's negative. Reel it in, Trunks.
What's positive is: I'm moving on, I think. I still think about Mom. All the time, in fact. But I know she's in a better place and I'll join her eventually. Sometimes I hate her for leaving me here. And then I hate myself for thinking about her so selfishly. If only she were still here, she'd have it all under control. She did have it all under control before she got sick. She kept both Capsule Corp and the world from falling apart by the sheer force of her personality and her genius mind, always thinking ten steps ahead of everyone. The world would have gone to shit without her, if she hadn't built that time machine. And even after the cyborgs were gone, it still would have gone to shit if she hadn't held it together.
What the hell am I in comparison to her? I'm weak and stupid. Can't even hold myself together.
Reel it in.
What's positive is: I'm talking. At least according to Dr. Hayden, that's good. I'm talking, and that's the first step toward recovery. Recovery from what? Certainly nothing anyone sees about me in the news. The world loves me. That's also positive. I'm their hero. I miraculously killed the cyborgs and ended two decades of global genocide and anarchy. I'm the leader of the reconstruction effort. I'm the most powerful being on this planet. No one can hold a candle to me.
Everyone who could is dead. Or in the other timeline.
What's positive is: I'm going to judge myself less by talking about these things. One of the first things Dr. Hayden pointed out was that I condemn myself for literally everything I do, for every thought that passes through my mind. She says I need to forgive myself, and that one day I'll realize I've done nothing wrong that needs forgiving. That this self-hatred is just a result of pressure and fear that there's no end to this race. Self-hatred stems from feeling hopeless. You feel responsible for your own hopelessness. And you think things like, if only someone else were in my shoes, they'd do a hell of a lot better. They'd be stronger, smarter, happier. They wouldn't give up.
What's positive is: I'm stopping now. End of day one.