Meditations on life and unlife

I've been thinking, recently. Really, it's all I've been doing while I wait for the Baron to help fabricate some documents to get my identity back.

What is the fundamental difference between you and us? The dead and the living and the undead? What is the complete nature of that curse that forces your bodies to continue moving despite all nature?

It still eats at me, even now. I crave the blood, even though all it does now is make me sick. There are scars on my arm from trying to satisfy myself with my own. I scar again, it's almost nice to see.

Is there something fundamentally different in the first place? The boundary is permeable at best. The living can become dead or undead, of course. I've seen the dead come back to being undead, in my uncle. Even the undead can become mostly living again, I've seen.

I have only just started to reliably keep food down. My stomach is starting to recover I suppose. I ate some chicken last night. Meat. What is it that makes this better than exsanguination? Or, if not better, more palatable?

Why is it that death grants one eternal life? It seems contradictory, does it not? As one grows further from life, they may exist for longer and longer. Is it like a candle, the brighter it burns, the sooner it burns out? If undeath is a dimming of the candle, how long can it last? I've met undead that have lived for centuries, millennia, with no signs of degradation. Perhaps the candle is fully snuffed out? Our life is not the flame, but the candle itself. Maybe this is the reason you fear fire so.

My hair has begun to grow again. I imagine this means I am aging once more. I'm feeling the effects of not having some of my medications as well. Hopefully I can soon remedy that, once I have my identity back. But even this, I find myself savoring. It may hurt, it may be difficult, but it is proof I live, in some way again.

My old mentor discussed both the living and the dead as two sides to a balance. As darkness and light, things that would be meaningless without the other. Things that are only valuable because of one another.

What, then, is the place of someone like me?

Signed,
Your friendly neighborhood Baobhan Sith