390 night in the woods - let's get angry! let's hopepunk!

Dear Readers,

Thanks to Angus and his scouting abilities, we all got through to a passage with shallow water. They stopped and I walked a bit ahead.

Then I had that dramatic *SCHLORP!* where I got swallowed suddenly. This was the scene where I fell deep into my own head to confront... whatever the heck that thing was, the Black Goat or something.

The stuff I said... has a lot of meaning. I was running away from what I was being told was an anger problem, but I was angry because of everything I was losing even before I came into this world and trying not to be angry got me all defenceless and I lost more and more and more. I decided I wanted to be angry, I wanted to feel the hurt of the loss since it was happening and until then I wanted to hope, because that meant something to me and it meant that I was something.

I knew hope wasn't going to save me forever but I just needed it right now. I told that awful, incomprehensible voice to shut up and to kill me right now if it was going to do it at all. Suddenly, I went back to standing at that shallow body of water, with my friends asking me if I was ok as I got all sleepwalky for a sec. I was ok now and able to walk normally.

I continued with them and we came to the bottom of the well, or what we first perceived as a vent. I said I could try to climb up there! Angus asked if I was up for this and this time I tried saying "No" and immediately followed with saying that didn't really matter as I was even less up for us starving to death. Gregg was like aw dude and Bea thanked me, saying it was very nice of me :) Same outcome, some other nice dialogue with it :)

I was like ugh, that was assuming I could even do this. Angus said they'd watch and I said ok.

I was now able to jump and able to look at my journal too! I doodled the skull Bea and I uncovered in the graveyard. I labelled it LITTLE JOE'S DANG SKULL with underline. I wrote SKULL HOLE!!! and had an arrow pointing to its head. I wrote some notes underneath that said - IS THIS WHY HIS SPIRIT WANDERS? - MUST HE BE AVENGED? Below this I drew the ghost figure again and wrote SAW HIM next to it with three arrows pointing at it.

I jumped up the little platforms sticking out of the wall and that lovely little instrumental riff full of hope got louder and louder with more instruments joining in. Soon I was out of the well!