A Life Worth Living

Have you ever imagined a world where time doesn't exist?

Time is useless, for the only time we have is our life, and how can we 'measure' it? Even if we can, how are we to possibly build a time measuring invention?

Impossible, yes, so the only thing we have to so-called 'measure' our time, or lives, is our immune bracelets.

An immune bracelet, or IB, is a band of light metal, stuck around our waist, and yes it can be adjustable. It has a small screen on it, that shows just exactly how many breaths we have left.

I've tried to count how long it was to take one breath, but it never worked. My mind immediately went fuzzy as I thought, "One, two, three".

It feels as if we humans have been programmed to not be able to think of counting. As I've told you, time is useless here.

Money is non-existent here too. I've watched films where humans pay with these little rectangles of greenish paper, and has a picture of the current president on it, or some other historical figure.

Those look weird and interesting, and I hope to acquire a collection of those small sheets with 1$, 5$, 10$, 20$, 50$, 100$ printed on them.

I guess they're called dollars or bucks, as the movies have told me, and they're way different with my world's way of transaction and payment.

The way we pay, is with our breaths. That's why, all of us have to be very cautious on what to buy and what not to buy. If it's immensely expensive, it can cost us our life.

If it's cheap, it can take a slice of time in our life, which is sad, since we all are given about 191625000000 breaths in our life, and the most expensive things costs a year or more.

A year's cost is about 7.5 million breaths wasted, just for your information. I never want to lay a hand, let alone buy, on things that cost years.

There is an exception, though. Rich people, and I mean, very rich people, can live up to hundreds of years, since they have the money, to start with, they might come from a wealthy family or have a good business, usually trading and investing, to buy Medicinal Immune System Health or MISH, for short.

MISH is expensive, and midpoint people, who work for the affluent ones, usually have no ability (which means breath, time, money, or whatever) to buy MISH.

Sometimes, there are some generous deep-pocketed people who would donate some to us. Now, sadly, I'm gonna tell you some not-so-exciting news.

I am one of those rather poorer ones. So much so, I have a sick younger brother in tow, and my parents divorced when I was five and my brother two.

Now I live with my mum, who works in a candy factory, and always brings little pieces of candy for me and my brother. I personally do not allow my brother to eat the candy, for it causes his condition to worsen.

Our home is a trashy apartment complex, with barely room to move, and a battered king-sized bed in one cramped room for us to sleep.

Our kitchen consists of a sink, that works pretty well, thank goodness, a tiny potable stove, a few pans and an old pot, which was Abuela's only will to mum.

Our place is quite clean, considering its diminutiveness, and we have a bathroom that has clean running water. I think our water is nice because our landlord is quite well off but is still amiably considerate of his clients.

I love my home, but the only thing that makes me sad is to see my brother lying weak on the bed, occasionally croaking for water.

I really need MISH, and my mum's been saving up for a long, long time, but her breaths are always being spent, for she always insists on buying me and my sibling whatever we want.

I've taught my brother to refuse and to tell me what he wants, so I can save up the breaths mum has transferred to me for my schools fees.

Yeah, that's another sad fact: I skip school, without my mum knowing, to save up for my brother's wants, and I've also secretly added to mum's savings for my brother's MISH.

You know how we save? Well, in the movies I've watched on subway trains, (oh yeah, if I want to watch TV or channels, I got to ride a train, which is rare, since it costs five breaths, which is valuable for me), humans save up by putting their buck or coins into a ceramic, pink 'piggy bank'.

It's basically just a pink pig, which is weird, and I don't understand why it has to be a pig. Why not be a sheep? Or a cat, so it'll look cuter?

Anyways, how I save is totally disparate to theirs.

There's this cool 'piggy bank' we have, and it's called a breath saviour. Basically, we attach our IBs to it, and transfer any amount of breaths we have.

But, if we want to transfer five breaths, but we only have ten left, it will stop and say that it's impossible to do so. If we have only five breaths left, there's a conceivable chance we'll close our eyes and never open them again.

The same goes with payment.

So yeah, life for me, a thirteen year old girl, has been tough. Skipping school, trying to hold in my own wants, saving up all the money I have for my brother, secretly giving my own savings to my mum's savings with the sole purpose of wanting my brother to get better by buying him MISH.

I've witnessed kids my age buy bracelets, appetising snacks, gooey chocolates, bright-coloured bicycles, and many other things that makes me melancholy with desire.

The feeling of wanting something, but not being able to have it, it's hard to bear and occasionally painful. I know, that I'll give up my whole life to my family, and I would do so.

I have thought about suicide, but every time, I intellectually take a few steps back, and remind myself that it's worth living to see the sun rise tomorrow morning, hear the birds cheaping and have the taste of greasy egg and beef bacon on my tastebuds.

Living in this world feels like a dream, where the reality is the agonising truth, and the only time I can be free from my burdens and heavy desires is when I close my eyes and wonder off to Dreamland.

I wonder why there's people whose lives are similar to mine, and how they can walk on with the weight of the world on their backs, but do it all with a smile and a laugh.

Like, how?

I've tried to, and I might've succeeded a couple of times, and I'm going to try for the rest of my life to smile. To enjoy life even though it might not be enjoyable, in some ways.

Here's a message for you normal humans:

Life seems hard, dreams are worth chasing for, and many obstacles God will put in your way. Philosophically thinking, none of us have the actual will to live.

What do we live for?

I ask yourself that. Think. Hard. What are you living for? Do you want to do something great and impress people? Do you want to prove that you are cool and awesome?

When you're believing that you'll see the world tomorrow, you're awesome enough. When you work or study for yourself and your own accomplishments and milestones, you're cool enough.

When you have the will to work to be better, you're impressive enough.

Here's one thing that kept me going this whole time:

"I want to wake up tomorrow morning, and be a better person than I was yesterday, mentally, emotionally, physically."

Express yourself, show your work, take one step after the other, but always work with the quote I told you earlier. All my life, I have believed that if I did the best for myself, I did the bets for the world.

I wanna work for myself, but then, I realised, that as I improved myself, the world slowly got better in my eyes. I didn't seem to be so desperate anymore, mum worked with a renewed vigour, and my brother didn't cough so often.

I hope someday, my hard work will pay off.

seven years later

Madison Gabriella, the girl who had fought for her brother's life, and had balanced work and life simultaneously at the young age of thirteen, was now a head CEO of MISH, and she has changed the world.

She's a generous person, since she has had some experience where she and her mother had to hammer away at work for their beloved brother and son.

Since she had some familiarity with hard living conditions, less breaths, and no education, she sympathises with children and people who are in the same condition currently.

She gives away free MISH charge depots, where people can charge their breaths for free and afford a good life, with their happy family and create a pleasant home with delectable food.

It's true what she had thought when she way younger.

If you wanna change the world, start small, and change yourself.