Isabela - Day 4

Sometimes I wonder what it really means to be human. I wonder what it means to live with people you will never really know and accomplish things you will never really understand. Sometimes I wonder where I am headed, I wonder why I came to be. Am I really only a coincidence or did I come with a greater aim? We have been raised to believe for everything to be ephemerous. We grew in the awareness that everything around us would eventually return to dust. However, despite this everlasting temporality, we are infinite. I like to think of the being as infinite in essence. We know no beginning and no end, only the present exists, and diffused memories of the past gradually fall into oblivion. We all came in mid-action and keep no recollection of our early youth. Life is an everlasting river of thoughts and experiences; the being is the awareness of Time’s flow. As for Death, our end is something external; an alien body. Passing away is something that only seems to happen to others. Life repels Death with equal passion as Death to Life. This play of opposites unfolds in a delicate balance of ends and beginnings.

Rain fell steadily as I collected my thoughts on the graveyard. The water running on the cold stone brought a feeling of comfort to my lonely soul. I smiled as I lay lilies next to my sister whose existence had been reduced to a simple name carved under a sunny day.

Are we really here or will we wake up and realize that it was all a dream?

Had she realized that nothing lasted forever, and that eternity could only be held in a second? Where did it go, that time we held so precious? When did the laughter fade into memory and when were the hugs washed away by the rain? How did the seconds tick by without any of us noticing it? And this feeling? This impression of losing grip of reality, when did it come to be? When did I sink into nothingness?

I felt my light disappear as her sunny days were covered by clouds. I felt part of me leave when she extended her hands to Death. When did all the years come crashing down? When did the weight of time fall on my shoulders? Sometimes, I wonder if life is worth living at all, I wonder if I have not been trapped in an endless loop of self-pity and regret. Why did Life have to give her away and bring something so terminal to my existence? And to think that only yesterday I allowed myself to fall in pleasant dreams and comforting illusions of hope and joy. Is life a blessing? Or was it a malediction that the gods cast on our pitiful existence?

Some call time the prolongation of agony, but it is perhaps only a friend. We battle so long, so hard to change its nature. We save time, make time, lose time and spiral in an obsessive behavior around it. We generate from it a compulsive need to build our world around Time. What for? All our attempts fall vain. No matter how hard we attempt to change its nature or slow it down, time will only tick by faster, and second by second, we get closer to death.

How is it that even so, we call ourselves eternal? How is it that all of this, all that we are living, is eternity to us? How do we keep on living in a world set on perpetual motion? How do we move in a place frozen in time? The world is constantly changing. People come and leave this planet every day. Millions of people. Each carrying a life, experiences, a unique form. Each of them have someone they love, someone they have grown attached to. They have lives you could never picture, they create worlds extending beyond what you could imagine, they see things you will never experience. They are unique, and although never indispensable to the society we built, they carry an inestimable value to the ones they love. At least, that is what you told me, as my sister passed away.

I used to love her, I used to hate her. I used to think she was my only answer and her word was my only truth. She made my reality and soon became my entire world. She taught me to fight in order to obtain what I wanted and soon proved to me that, when I would be most in need, she would be my first enemy. In a way, she tried protecting me from life by leading me towards my tomb. She wished my death countless times, she only wished to see me burn. She pushed me to improve. She pushed me again and again, waiting for me to break. She saw me fall, she watched as I lost foot and sank into desolate dreams where all light seemed to have faded away.

Soon, I had no way of distinguishing if this was more than one of my dreams. We often compare life to a play, I would say we dance on clouds. We are simple figures playing on thin air, mere apparitions dissolving before hearing the tick of the following second. And it was never enough, and it will never be enough. Everything she ever wished for me was always a step away from where I stood. But time just kept ticking away, bringing us closer to an end. Perhaps now it is time to close my eyes, one last time, and simply remember. Remember the times we waltzed under the rain and raised our hands to the heavens. It is time we remember the way she spun, again and again, her white dress flying to the rhythm of her young body dancing to unknown melodies of despair. It is time to remember the way she grew angel wings and flew into the heavens.

But time just kept ticking away,

And I cried, she danced, I laughed, she smiled, I lived, she died.

photo credit: https://images.saatchiart.com/saatchi/1045595/art/4149027/3218878-ELQJGSZU-7.jpg