The Stars

I stood in the grass, hands in my pockets, boots crushing the frosted grass under foot, head tilted back, drinking in the night sky. How infinite the sky looked, how endless its blue void, how permanent its lights. How beautiful its stars, 7 billion light years away. How burnt out they are, dying 7 billion years ago but still burning for us today. How special it makes us humans feel, those stars decorating our sky. How hopeful it makes us feel, thinking that they are watching over us as we fulfill our destiny. How naïve we are, in all our selfish glory.

I hear footsteps on the icy grass and glance towards the sound. It's a boy, a teenager, tears streaming down his face as he runs. He is running across the grass as if his pain gave him wings, head down, hair hiding his eyes. He doesn't look where he's escaping to, he just runs. I watch, reminded of when I was a naïve young boy too, thinking I could outrun he people and the pain. Thinking how foolish I was to try.

I watch him as he runs away, trying to leave his pain behind him, furiously trying to wipe his pain from his face, his heart, his mind. As if it were that easy. As if the pain people cause you will just leave after the physical proof of its presence gone. It causes too many mental scars to just go. To just go and let you heal. No, pain is forever.

He stops next to a tree, collapsing against it as he lets his frustration out in a body-shaking sob. I watch a moment, before turning away and starting to head across the grass, home. As I turn away, the image of the boy, and the memories he brings back are burned into my mind. I only brush them aside. I left people behind for a reason - they only ever hurt you; no one you meet won't cause you pain. Besides, it's so much easier to disappoint everyone than to please them; to ignore them than engage with them. Not that I have anyone to disappoint, or to ignore. I left everyone I knew and loved and hated behind many years ago, and now I'm the young man you share the train with everyday who you don't notice, the classmate who no one knows the name of, the neighbour you never see or talk to. Everything in my life is solitary and completely unextraordinary. Every day is the same. Everyone in my life is just background noise.

Is this a way to live? Am I really living, feeling nothing at all? Why do I exist if no one notices me, no one knows who I am? What's my purpose on Earth if I make no difference to it? If I died today, would anyone even know? Would there be anyone to invite to the funeral? Would they even be a funeral for the death of someone who never really lived? You can't celebrate the life of someone who's died if they didn't have a life; if they didn't live. How can I say I've lived when I've made no difference to the world, made no difference to the lives of anybody in this world?

I grit my teeth but carry on walking. I'll only get hurt again if I think like that, and my active presents will surely only injure others. People only bring pain.

But.. isn't pain what makes us human? Isn't pain how we learn and grow and move on to become stronger; stronger for all the pain? Pain is the side effect of trying, of living in this world. But we know no other life, so we bare it, and we counter it with love and happiness and laughter and people. People can bring you pain, but they can also relieve it. If you turn away something good just out of fear of what bad could come from it, you are a coward. You fear what could come from living, and so you don't live. You fear what you don't understand and I don't understand pain, so I hide from the world as if waiting for the pain to go. I'm a coward, I realise. I'm a coward.

Maybe, that realisation is what makes me stop. What makes me stay in the night air for just a little longer. What makes me look up at the stars, and not see burnt out dreams, but stars. See their light and colour and power. See their wonder. I reached out for a nearby tree and steady myself, staring at my feet in disbelief as they threaten to bring me to my knees. What is this I'm feeling? I feel like I've just discovered the universe for the first time, like I was just reintroduced to the world, like I momentarily felt my potential, rather than my insignificance. What is this? Is this a desire to live rather than merely exist? Is this a desire for connection, for people? Is this, emotion? After years of being disconnected from people, from properly living, is something I fought so hard to smother being reawoken? Is something I've disregarded for years trying to reach me again?

I put a hand on my heart; it's racing. An icy wind stings my face and I put my hands up to cover it. When I take them away they are damp, and I stare at them in shock. I put my hands to my cheeks again and feel the tears rain down my face. Furiously, I begin to wipe them away as they keep on coming, pouring down my cheeks, everything I haven't felt for years because I removed myself from the world. Everything I've numbed and shut away in a locked box in my chest, every tear I've shed before. As my tears begin to subside, I bury my hands in my pockets and, with a deep breath, I turn to walk away. Before I step back into my life, into the world, one last time I stop, and though my vision is blurry, I look up and I can see the brightness of the stars. I blow them a kiss, a thank you and a farewell, and for the first time in ten years, I smile.