Two Hundred One

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[TRANSCRIPT]

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Alright, I’ve done my final checks of all of Don’s regular hideouts and he’s still nowhere to be found. But I’m not giving up hope entirely. I guess I should say they’re my final checks for now. I figure after I go and find Harry we can come back to NY and look together. 

I realize he might not be in the city anymore, but I don’t know where else to look. And I don’t know, maybe it will be nice for Harry and I to revisit the old spots. Staying in Richie’s loft really has me thinking about all those old times. I think I’ve spent more time in this apartment than any apartment I’ve actually lived in. I guess that’s not true. Maybe spent more time awake than any apartment I ever lived in. Because I only slept over here a few times. But the times were always good, weren’t they. That’s how it feels now anyway. 

There’s a part of me that knows that can’t possibly be true. The version of Harry in the past, in my thoughts, changes all the time. I remember her at times harsher than she probably actually was and at other times sweeter and more forgiving. And maybe it’s because she was both those things—all of those things, all at once, all the time. Or maybe it’s because my feelings on her continue to change. 

I don’t remember when I first—I mean, I remember what I thought about her the first time I met her. And I remember what I thought about her when we were in that prison van, driving through the dark. Before I knew what I know now. Before I’d done what I did. 

But it’s the in between that’s…not hazy, but like a watercolor where all the paints have run together. In the near decade we knew each other before everything happened…I mean, I always felt strongly. When I disliked her, I hated her and when I liked her, I…

I don’t remember when it started. I don’t remember when that swirl, that storm of feelings—well, it’s not that it ever went away, but there started to be this thing underneath it, informing everything. At a certain point, when I disliked her, I didn’t hate her anymore, I was just frustrated and tortured. And when I liked her, well, I was also frustrated and tortured. But I don’t know when that started, I don’t know when she became someone who was so far beneath my skin that it didn’t matter what I felt about her moment to moment because it never changed the fundamental truth that I wanted to be around her. 

Anyway, I don’t know if I’m making sense, it’s late and I’m planning to get up early tomorrow to start driving, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about it, being in this space. I couldn’t stop thinking about if this living room was the place that that feeling first started. I can't stop thinking about my own recollections of Pete and Don and Richie. Were they who I thought they were? 

Was Pete always this central, stable pillar in my life? This person I could lean on and rely on and who I still didn’t know all that much about. In my mind, he’s been such a morally upstanding figure, somebody that…somebody that I think about when I start to spiral about the things that I’ve done and I just think—Pete. Pete would still stand by me. He’s loyal and he’s good. Then I think, he was a criminal. Just like me. He lied and stole and tricked people. So that image in my head of him being…I don’t know, Captain America is…well, it must not be entirely true. 

And it’s the same with Don and Richie. I remember them being, well, knuckleheads, but knuckleheads who cared. Who I had started to feel safe around even if in the beginning I wasn't so sure about them. But again, is that just thinking about how I’d feel if I saw them now—that the mere presence of other people would help me feel some sense of normalcy, some sense of calm. 

Memories are a funhouse mirror, aren’t they? We never really know if what we remember is true. I’m not even sure we remember events with any sort of clarity. I used to think that the one thing we did know was how we felt about things, but now I’m not even sure that’s the case. And the strangest thing of all is that everybody experiences this. Everybody has versions of people in their lives that exist in their memories. And we can never really know how another sees us, how another person remembers us, or judges us for our actions. Anyway, I am gonna find Don and when I do, I’m gonna ask him what he remembers about me. 

And when I see Harry, I’ll…

I don’t know how this time apart might have changed the version of me in her head. 

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