chronology of the cosmos

Everything eventually dies a cold death.

You speak this into stillness, the mere thought a whisper escaping your lips, said like a quiet secret rather than a known fact.

“Did you know that?” you ask, eyes drawn to the night sky, dotted with pinpricks of light you know would soon fade out into the blackness, “That one day, the whole universe will stretch apart and freeze up, no matter what happens.”

He smiles at you, even if you can’t see it, “I didn’t.”

“Well, now you do.”

You shift closer to him to rest at the crook of his neck, the blanket bunching up in between your bodies. You lean on your arm, shifting all your weight on it, as it starts to itch as blades of grass pierce through the thin layer of cloth you both lay on. It’s just the two of you, backs to the ground, eyes to the sky, no one else around for miles and miles. It’s just the two of you at an old, abandoned lot, secluded far from the city, an empty bottle of wine kicked steps from where you lay through a patch of weeds.

It’s just the two of you, and it feels so natural.

“Isn’t the thought a bit depressing?”

You pull him closer to you, slinging your right arm across his chest and slipping the other under his nape, “I don’t think so,” Even then, your eyes are to the stars, “I find comfort in it.”

“In the fact that the entire universe is gonna die out?”

It’s only then when you pull your gaze from the sky to look him straight in the eyes.

“In that, there’s a definite end.” You lift your arm from where it lay on his chest to gesture to the heavens, “There’s a lot out there that’s unknown, but there’s a weird relief that all this,” Your arm falls back onto him, “Will be over soon.”

He nods, “I guess we don’t need answers, we just need to know the extent of things, how long they’d last. We wouldn’t wanna hold out hope for too long.”

You sigh, “Yeah.”

-

The universe began with a big bang; once infinitely hot, dense and small, existence as we know it erupted, exploded and expanded upon that one gravitational singularity. It was sudden. It was heated. Like anything, it was another beginning approaching its inevitable end.

You first meet at college, at 20 years old. You’re in the same first-year Philosophy class, the one that would be boring whenever he isn’t present. Every time he raises his hand to ask a question, you know it would matter, you always know his words carry the substance your professor would lack. All your attention is on him because he’s too magnetic to ignore.

He didn’t care for the technicality of it all—he’d argue that no study, no concept could compare to living life itself (in hindsight, maybe he shouldn’t have taken such a strictly academic class). He’d ask questions with this in mind, never mind the facts being shoved down our throats. The subject of human nature, knowledge, reality, and existence can’t merely be academic, this he knew. You knew this too. In theory, the subject would excite you, fueling your passions for trying to understand the secrets of existence. In practice, you agree with him that the class continues to be burdened by the professor who’d water it down to pure, scholastic ideas. That’s how you and he get along (other than sharing pencils every now and then).

He’d openly challenge your professor, too. 

“Philosophy is a study meant to make you think, sir, to make you question,” he’d say, tone sharp and head held high, “There can’t just be one answer to such questions.”

A few moments later, and he gets kicked out of class. Shortly after, you chase after him into the library. 

When you finally find him in the World History section, you confess. It’s then where you find yourself pressed against bookshelves, arms, and legs wrapped around him and lips enclosed onto his.

It’s classic girl meets boy, something meant to be. Two passionate souls, two beating hearts. A match made in heaven.

-

The growth doesn’t stop. Our universe will keep expanding, and this won’t stop any time soon. It stretches far and wide—more galaxies and planets are born right as their predecessors die. At this point, it’s still young. At this point, we give it time.

You’ve been with him for a steady 4 years, and things only seem to get better. You graduate at the top of your class, and he cheers the loudest during the ceremony. Everyone remains seated when he starts jumping up and down and yelling out your name at the top of his lungs, the faces of the students next to him contorted in either amusement or annoyance (a hard-line cut between those two types of people).

During your speech, you dedicate a quarter of your success to his support. Just a quarter because of course, you’d joke, that you did all of the heavy lifting to accomplish schoolwork and he just cheered on the side (just like what he’s doing now). While you say this, there’s resounding laughter from the audience. While you say this, you hear your own smile seeping into your voice.

You’ve got a good dynamic going on—supportive of each other, loving, understanding, mature, and everything young couples shouldn’t usually be like. You’re on the cusp of real adulthood, past your youth, ready for more. You’re ready to grow, together.

-

And so after a while, it cools down. It all settles to a certain degree, enough for life to unfold on a distant planet known as Earth. 

You move in as soon as you both could, at 25 years old, as soon as your jobs were stable enough. It’s not much—a well-priced, unfurnished studio apartment with plain off-white walls all around and a questionable carpeted floor (replete with mystery brown stains).

But you both work hard enough to get it to good shape. You paint the walls, splashes of bright blue, lines of bright yellow, and hints of bright green. It’s all bright, the tint of juvenile optimism. You’re joking around and laughing, getting more paint on each other than on the walls.

And when the adrenaline rush of repainting wears off and you’re left nauseous over paint fumes, you call him out on his horrid choice of colors. Then, the two of you start over with fresh coats of white paint.

You’re nowhere near finished, but your new place already feels like a home.

With him, you’ll build a home.

-

However, there’s something called dark energy. It threatens to pull everything apart, even more, to keep it growing, but gravity’s hold is strong. Gravity keeps it all together.

You’re 38 when you both decide to stop trying. When hoping becomes too exhausting.

“I’m sorry,” the words ring on repeat in your head, “I’m afraid there isn’t much more we could do.”

You tried everything. You tried timing conception, adopting a healthier lifestyle, using ovulation kits, removing alcohol and coffee from your diet, all the methods they’d recommend.

And yet, it wasn’t enough.

He tells you it’s okay, rubbing small soothing circles in your back, hot tears rolling down your cheeks as you sit right outside your gynecologist's office. You try ignoring the stares of sympathy you receive from passerbys. You don’t want to accept what they seem to already know.

-

It becomes too great to explore. It’s much too vast to take in, with a lot still going on, with a lot we’re yet to understand. And maybe that’s the point. We’re probably not meant to see it all. We’re probably just meant to sit it out while the universe continues to unravel before us.

We can’t comprehend the chronology of the cosmos (yet). But mostly, we know how it’s going to end.

Nothing really happens. Nothing goes wrong, but nothing goes right. You’ve spent 25 loving years with him, but ever since a few years ago, something started to change. In strong relationships, there’s bound to be a force that would drive the two of you apart. For the last 20 or so years, you’ve been beating that force, winning over it with ease, but recently, you’ve started to lose to it.

Because after all these years, there’s still something missing. Maybe commitment isn’t enough anymore. It’s not enough to make up for the toll being together has taken on you both, not enough to stand spending every day with someone whose tired soul is just as empty as yours, or to fill the deafening silence that is a day spent together with him. It’s not enough to keep pretending everything continues to be how it once was.

Is that why you stopped trying? Have you given up? 

Or is this what was meant to happen?

You don’t hate him, but you don’t love him, at least not anymore. It all fizzles out, a numbing sensation replacing what was once the stirring ardor that consumed you when you saw him enter the same room. Gone are the impassioned conversations, the touches that felt like fire, the gazes that lingered and burned and ripped right through your skin. Every heated feeling hardens into ice.

When you confront him about it, he feels the same.

At 45 years old, you file for a divorce. It’s mutual. No hard feelings.

In fact, no feelings at all.

-

There’s a concept known as entropy. It’s a thermodynamic quantity that represents disorder, randomness, how things happen beyond our concrete understanding. It’s hard to explain, but basically, it’s everywhere. When it keeps increasing and increasing, until it reaches its maximum value, that’s when it happens. That’s when the universe ends.

In this case, the dark energy wins, pulling the entire universe apart. Gravity loses its hold. 

You’d think to keep in contact with him, but you just don’t. There’s really no reason to. There’s nothing left of what once was, and you guess that it’s okay.

Today, you celebrate your 50th birthday. You celebrate it alone, in the old apartment that you decided to keep. You remember how he asked you why you picked the apartment over the two-story house.

Because I don’t belong, you wanted to say, because without the family I wasn’t able to build, it’ll forever stay a house, never a home.

At least here, just living with you, it felt like enough. It felt like home.

Maybe he felt the same, too. Right away, he sold the house and bought out a space meant for one, a place fit for just him.

You celebrate your 50th birthday with ripping open gifts from your nieces and nephews, a glass of wine in hand, and the company of walls that feel like home.

-

Everything goes cold. It’s called Heat Death, or the Big Freeze. The universe starts out hot and small and dense. It ends with a cosmic graveyard so cold, big, and forever expanding. There’s poetic justice to it—that whatever happens in between won’t seem to matter. Its beginning ties in almost too perfectly to its end.

You don’t know how, but you end up back here, back at the empty lot he took you to on your first date. Luckily, the place is secluded enough that no kid could come up and question why a middle-aged lady is sat down on overgrown grass, stargazing in the middle of the night. 

You don’t dwell on the past, you don’t think about your life, or what’s happened between the two of you. Your mind doesn’t stray from staring down the stratosphere, doesn’t wander off to fond memories. 

It’s not like you would have the answers to all of your questions. It’s not about the answers, anyway. What happened has happened, and no amount of enlightenment could change it.

In life, only a few things are known for sure—things begin, then things end. Anything happening in between might as well remain unknown.

Still, your eyes are to the heavens. There’s another thing that’s certain. There's comfort in knowing that whenever you look up, you'll see light. The stars and the sky. A match made in heaven.

And yet, even they are meant to die out one day. There’s comfort in that, too.

A definite end.

-

Everything goes cold, and that’s just how it’s meant to be.