(This is my first post ever. Please read and review honestly. Also any other suggestions for a title would be very much appreciated. Thanks, Ced xx)
Yesterday I woke up and convinced myself to live; tomorrow I will wake up and convince myself to live, today I write because I convinced myself to live...
I was seventeen…when I decided that death was not in the cards for me. I had recently lost my faith in God and was confronted by the morbid reality that there was nothing awaiting me after this life. I found it hard to grasp the concept of…being dead. If I tried to visualize it, I was met with an image of myself alive in a coffin underneath the ground. Forever conscious. Unable to escape. Trapped in Eternal Nothingness. My view was best expressed through the ramblings of Rosencrantz; a character in the play by Tom Stoppard: ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead’. He says “Did you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it... one thinks of it like being alive in a box. One keeps forgetting to take into account the fact that one is dead, which should make all the difference, shouldn't it?... you'd be in there forever, even taking into account the fact that you're dead. It isn't a pleasant thought.” It was not a pleasant thought. I remember sobbing at the dinner table one night, terrified by the notion of what was surely to become my fate. I was only slightly comforted in the knowledge that I was young…my death was most likely years away. But even then…I would grow old. This was another concept that discomforted me. My mother had scolded me many times for my vanity. Although I don’t believe I was any more narcissistic then the other young women my age, I did want to keep my youthful appearance. I often tried to imagine what it would be like to grow old physically. My long dark curls would turn gray. My vibrant blue eyes that had obtained much flattery would become hidden beneath sagging eyelids. My soft, smooth skin would become dry and cracked. My back would hunch and I would lose my swiftness and begin to hobble. This is what I saw in the elderly people around me. I would pass them on the streets and think “This is what you’ve become?” They may have lived extraordinary, happy lives… but their end result was depressing. So I made the decision.
Never grow old. Never die.
Two hundred years later and I’m often mistaken for a woman in her mid-twenties. I’ve retained my youthful appearance and feel…as the old saying goes…’fit as a fiddle’. But to what purpose? Of course, having lived such a long time is...a great achievement…that of which I always dreamed…but what meaning does life hold for one who has done all that I have done. Long ago, the world was a giant to me…full of mysteries, secrets and unanswered questions. Those were the things that made life…worth living. I don’t mean to sound ungrateful for this gift I have been given. I have had so many amazing experiences in this life. I’ve lived. I’ve laughed. I’ve loved. But I’ve also lost. Those who were most precious to me in my early days…they are gone. Although the pain has lessened, my heart still aches at the memories. I long for them. I tried to bring them with me so that I would not be alone as I feel I am now… but their hearts did not yearn for this life as mine did. And so they left me. One after the other. Until all who connected me to my past life were gone. These days I walk amongst strangers. They do not understand my past, nor do they wish to. This is the price I have paid for my fears. And sometimes on days such as this…when the rain beats against my windows and I sit alone in my home at two hundred and seventeen years of age…I wonder if eternal nothingness would really be so terrifying after all...
