I am not a gun.

Freedom is a very important concept to a lot of people. But I feel that many people only have a partial understanding of what freedom actually means. Almost everyone agrees that the foundation of freedom is choice — being able to choose how you live your life. Place of residence? You choose. Political views? You choose. Who to love? You choose. Freedom is the state of having that choice. Right?

I am not a gun.

But there’s more to freedom than just choice. Freedom, in my eyes, isn’t just doing what you want — it’s living with the consequences. That’s how I think of freedom. It’s the ability to bear the consequences of your own actions. Nobody else can bear them for you, and you in turn will bear no one else’s. Depending on how you define “consequences,” that could range from perfectly plausible to utterly infeasible. I like to aim for somewhere in the middle; not so extreme as to be unachievable, but not so easy as to undermine the effects.

I am not a gun.

I’ve always wanted to live like that, and to make a world where others can too. If I had to say why this is so important to me, I’d say it’s because of my favorite movie. It’s called The Iron Giant. In it, a giant robot meets a little kid and becomes fast friends with him. The giant is very kind, and remarkably gentle for a towering iron behemoth. But the problem is, the giant is a walking weapon. A gun. Guns… kill people. And because of this, the giant is the ideal example of the freedom I want to create. Because even though the giant is a weapon of mass destruction, he chooses to be something else.

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I am… Superman.

The giant chose to be a hero.

Even when that meant flying headfirst into a nuclear bomb.

He chose to be a hero, and bore the consequences.

His parts were scattered across the globe by the bomb, forcing him to reassemble himself piece by piece.

And in the final scene of the movie, he fucking smiled.

That’s freedom. A world where a gun that can choose to be Superman.

…

And I never even got a chance.

You can’t be Superman if you die in a car crash at seventeen. You can’t do jack shit to make a difference then, can you?

Of course, the paramedics are telling me I’ll live. That’s part of their job. But I know they’re wrong. I can feel parts of my body that I’ve never consciously felt before. I can feel them because they’re shutting down, not working like they should anymore. And I’m completely powerless to save myself, or even to help in any way. It feels like a slap in the face, to be told so decisively that everything I’ve done, everything I am, means nothing. I’m not even angry at the other driver. I’m angry at the world. Angry that this is all I get. It’s all I can think about as the ambulance goes blurry. It’s all I can think about as the paramedics start shouting at me. It’s all I can think about as my consciousness caves in on itself.

It’s all I can think about as a coldness seems to seep into my soul.

It’s all I can think about.

All I can think.

…

I am Quil Marshall Greene, and I have been wronged.