This weekend’s episode of The Walking Dead featured a series of unpleasant events that have left me quite unhappy with the world. Spoilers are libel to pop-up anywhere after this sentence so be advised.

So there isn’t much of a thesis or coherent course of thought that this article is meant to have; Im just really upset and need to vent some of these terrible, terrible feelings. Watching this episode really brought out a new feeling in me that I have never had before while watching the show. Normally I like to analyze the plot devices and psychology of the characters but tonight was different. During the lead up to the reveal I knew that they were purposefully building suspense but I felt none. I knew that they were showing the way that Negan was working his way into Rick’s mind, but I couldn't appreciate that. The entire time of this episode my prevailing feeling was grief.

Going into this episode I knew that at least one of the show’s most beloved characters was scripted to die. I was aware of the possibility that one of my favorite characters across all franchises would possibly not make it out of this episode alive. I wasn’t prepared though. Abraham will be duly missed but really who we all wept for was Glenn. The most pure-hearted character on the show has passed and I’m simply not okay. The writers took the lowest blow they possibly could have at their fan-base and I have mixed feelings about how I want to move forward with the show after this. It’s good writing but devastating to the invested audience. I don't think a single fan batted an eye (there is a joke in there somewhere) when Rick bit out that man’s throat, but watching Glenn struggle to hold onto his last sliver of consciousness to tell Maggie that the will find her ripped every ounce of happiness that I had in my body. Seeing his mind and body so easily broken made me feel my own mortality and the mortality of those I love a little too strongly and I felt as if a dear friend had been brutally attacked.

The higher feelings that I think I can stem from this are as follows. I hate the ugliness that comes from using decisive violence. I think violence has it’s applications but I feel it always has to be held accountable for what it truly is, and that is a means to a swift and resolute end. I can see the value in that, I can even see the necessity of that in anomalous situations, but to see such violence carried out for the sake of asserting dominance shakes me to my core. I’m terrified of any philosophy that excuses the use of violent actions or rhetoric for anything other than a last-resort conflict resolution. Humanity is so precious and seeing someone who I value for their degree of humanity having that taken away from them so brutally just really messes me up. As a closing thought and as a request, please love someone. See the beauty that can be found in loving others so that, no matter what, you value people enough to never want to have to take the responsibility of another person’s life.