I still feel guilty when I don’t behave the way I used to. They have told me that I have nothing to feel guilty for. The fault lies with those who expect me to be the same person I was before I died.

But I see this … disappointment in their eyes, or hear a strangeness in their voices, when I fail to do that thing I don’t remember anymore. Or when my reaction is not quite right.

I know that a part of it is simply the problem of memory. So much is lost at death. Memories, particularly. And if someone does not come to visit and refresh your memory of them right after reanimation, those memories will fade.

And those who came to visit with me in the hospital, I remember knowing. And if they remained in my life, I even care for them. There is a warmth that is pleasant.

But for the living, pleasant isn’t enough.

The living feel things so STRONGLY. Emotions drive them, push them, this way and that. The living cry, they weep, they scream in anger, or grow quiet in the throes of deep depression. They Feel, with a capital F.

The Reanimated do not.

We feel warmth or irritation. Comfort or discomfort. But nothing inside us drives us to any extreme of action.

And today…

Today, my sister told me about the death — a true death — of “my old friend”, Marty. I don’t remember him.

It was odd when my sister told me about his death. I felt this expectation from her. And I am not even truly  sure what she was looking for.

I tried to say all the right things. I tried to make it sound “real”. But she saw through it, to the coldness. But I can’t help it. I feel nothing. Marty is a blurry image when I try to remember him. He never came to see me after my reanimation. And my memories of him are faint whispers at best.

And that, too, disturbs me.  A little. Because I know that without something to freshen the memories after reanimation, most of the time memories of people disappear completely. And I know that I must have cared for him a lot if any memory of him remained. But knowing that still doesn’t help me grieve for him.

And the living don’t understand. Only another Reanimated could.

So we have meetings, we, The Reanimated. We gather to talk about our struggles. About how hard it is to make the living comfortable around us. How we must always fake emotions we don’t have with the living. And how we sometimes we pull it off, but sometimes we don’t. We talk about the looks we get, when the living realize again, that no, we’re not quite the same as we were Before. And that maybe, the familiar face they that are looking at is actually a stranger.

And we are. That shouldn’t be a crime.

I have read articles on the web calling us not “The Reanimated” but “The Undead”. That claim that we are cold inside., soulless, and this is why we don’t feel anything strongly.  They call us harbingers of the End Times, bringers of Armageddon.

Some people fear us. Like the family of that woman in Texas, reanimated last year, whose children won’t let her touch them because she is “not the same”.

I feel bad for her. The living feel bad for her children.

But as much as people talk about how spooky The Reanimated are, nobody wants to die. And right now, most have “Reanimate” clearly marked on their driver’s licenses.

We talk about this at our meetings. The Reanimated cannot have children, and since death is inevitable both for those who want reanimation and those who do not, eventually, excuse me for saying so, we will win.

I don’t think people see that The Reanimated will outlast the living. Death will empty the world, and eventually, there will only be us, The Reanimated.

At the meetings, we all agree that we would like that. No more emotions to fake. No more eyes filled with disturbance and disappointment because we are different. And we have decided to keep quiet, and wait.

We wait for the whole, wide world to die. So we can finally be ourselves.