dear diary,

it has been ten years since the dreadful accident at the cliff.

it took me ten years to actually talk about it. i don't feel scared now, when i pick you up to scratch my pen against your pages and record my story.

starting off, zion.

the poor guy screamed his head off when she fell. after a few moments, he went into a trance, and almost jumped after her. i had to hold him back, which resulted in a scuffle. add rain and wet rocks to the equation, you get a guy who slipped on the rocks and hit his head.

the police suspected me at first, and it was horrible. i spent a day in jail, crying, when my parents finally appeared and helped me. i was deemed innocent, and released.

that's when i ran to the hospital. zion was comatose, the injury to his head an internal one. he woke up a few days later, with fucking amnesia. if the situation wasn't so grave, i would be laughing.

since he didn't remember anything, not me, not rae, heck, not even himself, the doctor deemed him mentally stable. after rehabilitation, he was free to roam around. no trace of the broken, autophobic boy remained.

i still have mixed feelings about it. to him, now, i am just the friendly girl who knows his family. no one bothered telling him about his past reputation, and incidents. he doesn't even know rae. the man is now married, with a pair of twins. he is an elementary school teacher.

as for me, i went on to be guidance counsellor. zion and i work in the same school complex-him at the elementary school black and me at the middle and high school block. these kids are fine. they seem tough with clear heads. i am glad. makes my job easy.

i finally moved on from him. i've been dating this guy, and artist, for three years. he's cool. i love him, and he says he does.

as for rae.

she never fell.

on the way down, by some miracle, she managed to land on a ledge protruding from the rough face of the cliff. she just conked out, and landed safely on the ledge, which wasn't visible from the top. even the rescue helicopter hadn't seen it immediately.

the funny thing was, she didn't suffer as much as zion, considering she was the one who fell. she had two broken ribs, a broken leg and a bad concussion.

when she woke up, of course, her first thought was about zion. she was devastated when she learnt he slipped and hit his head. and she died on the inside when she learnt she slipped away from his mind.

it was bad. real bad. it took her more than a year to get over him. during that time, she was a zombie. did nothing. dropped out of school.

then one day, out of the blue, she started writing. day and night, all day long. one month later, she had a remarkable bundle of pages. another two months later, a book appeared on the market under her name.

writing the book was therapy for her. she finally accepted the truth, and moved away. she still keeps in touch with me. she's single, but adopted a girl and a boy. in these few years, she wrote many other books, but her best one always remained to be mint and rose, her first book.

but then, it's always the true stories that end up being the best.

-

A/N (the last one ever, makes me sad.)

Autophobia is a real, actual issue which I haven't been able to capture in the few measly words I have written.

Zion's eccentric behaviour was hated by many of you, and there were many who called him toxic, crazy and other choice of words I would rather not repeat. Thing is, he is sick. And that was why he was the way he was.

As for Rae, she was called a doormat, a masochist, spineless, and again, many other words. And yes, she was most of them. She wasn't spineless, she was kind. She liked to expect the best from people. She was not a masochist, she was stubborn and she wanted what she wanted. She wasn't a doormat by choice; all her life, she was treated as one, and never knew a different way.

My characters are not perfect. Neither is my book. But they're both real. Autophobia is real. Depression is real. Pain is real. But we're human. We heal. We grow. We learn. Of course, no one said all the change that happens actually happens for the best, but it happens.

I'm learning. Many things. To be a better writer. To be less of a procrastinator. To be kind. To love, to give, freely, wholesomely. And so are Zion and Rae and Lee.

And so are you, whether you know it or not.