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Unnatural Fate

Small plant with two small leaves coming from soil
Photograph: Sourabh Panari/Unsplash


I didn't know what to do, but I knew I couldn't go on much longer. It had been years since I felt...right? Normal? I don't know what word fits. I just know that it had been years since I experienced it. Maybe never.

My life was good, envious. Yet, despite all that, I couldn't stop the despair. The sense of impending doom. The feeling of unease.

On paper, I was healthy. Everything was in the appropriate ranges and ratios. Except maybe my weight, but who wasn't a bit chunky in modern times? Pounds aside, my bill of health was snow-white.

But that's only according to the things that can be measured. The things that we know to count. The things that technology is capable of measuring. But what about everything else? Numbers unseen, unknown, and unknowable? How was I in terms of those?

I have no way to prove it, but I was deathly ill in the realm of the unquantifiable. Somewhere deep inside of me was a pit, a void. I could sense this black hole that could never and would never be satisfied. 

And it wasn't that I was selfish or self-centered. On the contrary, I wanted to be otherworldly.  I wanted to be Mother Theresa, tenderly offering my talents and treasures for the good of humanity. But the thing about a black hole is it can't help but consume the stuff around it. Nothing escapes. That is its nature.

From birth, my days had been numbered. Maybe my life would've been much more pleasurable if I'd known and accepted it sooner, but I didn't. Or maybe I did, but I chose to believe that I could fight. Beat the odds. Manifest destiny.

But I'm as powerful and helpless as an air molecule in the breeze. I don't direct myself. I just float in the forces acting on me.

Yes, that’s it. I spent too much time believing in free will, thinking I was god and master of my universe when I was just a variable in a cosmic equation. In the beginning, the universe was set in motion. And at that time, the forces determined I'd be a vapor—a brief breeze on a cheek. I wasn't made to last.

Or at least, I wasn't made to meet a natural end. But how could it be unnatural if it was destined?

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