Lost, without a hand to hold. I imagine that's how some men feel in my position. As though everything they once had, all those they once knew, has gone forever. Because they were abandoned, or because they pushed it all away, who can say.
Yet it's weird, I've felt that way for so long, for so many years, I assumed that that would be how I felt at this moment. But somehow, staring at the noose before me, I've never felt more alive, and less alone.
I am guilty. I am innocent. I am a contradiction. And it doesn't matter.
The events that lead to this moment, they don't matter.
All that matters is that I am taking one for the team. The team I thought had forsaken me for so long. The team that I now realise have been trying to save me all along. The team that stand before me now, looking as though they too are about to be executed by the state we all served in good faith.
We became a team. We became friends. We became family. Those are the events that matter at the end. Not the situations and circumstances of my crime.
My very best friends are out there. One catches my eye and winks. Another nods. One closest to me, he cracks a hanging joke which I can hear from here.
The noose is tightened round my neck while I laugh.
Onlookers who never heard his line assume that I am mad at the end.
Maybe I am.
Maybe I always was.
But at least I am in good company.