When I was a kid, I thought I was immortal/divine. I heard and read so many fantastic tales of gods, heroes, and beings that did and could not die. I understood the absurdity of being human: to be part of the only conscious, thinking species in a world with quadrillions of beings, what luck is this? Surely, I either won the evolutionary lottery, or I am a being of great destiny!
But as people age around me, my self-aggrandizing belief shows its cracks. What if I truly did win this evolutionary lottery, and now I am simply an animal among animals?
No death, ever, hit me as hard as the death of my friend, my peer, the one I saw as the closest family, the friend I would have given up anything for, that I would have loved to live with, to know more about, the one friend I admired, and with whom I felt close; the only true company I ever had. One day there, the next, no double tick on Telegram, and the next, until I realized the double ticks would never return, that we would never talk again, that I would never have anyone to share everything with.
I cried for an entire month. It has been 7 months, and my "fixed" sleeping schedule is now as broken as it ever was, going to sleep when the sun rises and waking up when it's waning again. I could barely function for months. Any time I find something cool, I find myself not knowing where to send it anymore. It feels that a huge part of my soul left with my grief and turned me into a normal person seen from the outside, a third party, not the narrator but the narrated.
But time has truly passed, and while it heals the wound, the scar is there: a huge, scathing scar. I'm still reorienting myself, finding my footing, looking around, and seeing what can be done.
This coincided with being forced to move again, with the death of more people, with the loss of a job with huge income, with the death of my pet... I need to stop winning these lotteries, and lightning needs to stop striking around me! But it is an unavoidable reminder of my mortality. It seems I am part of a species that can die. I'm still not entirely sure, but as time moves on, the compass seems to lead ever more accurately toward a tomb.