Perhaps.
Perhaps I am nothing and no one. And maybe I’m not truly gifted at anything. No matter how hard I work, maybe I will end up somewhere in the middle... No matter what I do. Maybe that is the hand I was dealt, and all I can do is play the cards.
I think the reality of this sort of feeling reaches few people. I had a math teacher in high school. He had a story of how he had played catcher in an upper baseball league. Maybe semi-professionally. Worked his ass off. One day, he realized that he wouldn’t be as good as the other guys who didn’t work as hard. Not because he didn’t work hard enough. Not because he wasn’t good. But because no matter what he did, he realized that he couldn’t be the best.
It’s a hard reality to face. That you’ll never be that paragon you had always hoped and dreamed that you would be. Facing the reality that you fit into the universe in a different manner than you may have believed or desired. But that is life. And that is why people shoot for the stars. Because even if they miss, they’ll be cast out endlessly, weightlessly into space. Surrounded by nothing, and yet… everything.
In that vast and empty void — you find yourself. You examine your ideas; the ones that you have about the world, the ones you that have about yourself.
You realize that there are thousands of beautiful ways to live this life.
If your path is like mine, (I hope there are none of you.) you come to terms with the fact that you may never be loved. You bear the weight of knowing that your bloodline may end with you. You face the reality that no one sees your path as you do. You come to accept that at the end of the day, you’re alone. Your home is empty. Your messages are empty. There are no other shoes beside yours in the shoe place. No familiar faces. No voices left that are anything but ghosts of your past.
You realize that the sacrifices, the pain, the loneliness, the failures, the vast and empty space… it is all just fuel for your dream. And more than any of that — you realize that although your dream is about you in some sick and twisted way, it has always been and will always be to give people the hand that you never got.
I was shot into space and no matter how hard I’ve tried, I haven’t been able to explain the experience to anyone else.
An alien, who’s home is among the stars.
“From space dust I was born,
and one day,
to it, I shall return.”
Thank you for reading.
I don’t usually make dedications but I wanted to dedicate this to my family. I was lucky enough to be born into a flawed and distraught family. But no matter what has happened, we have never given up on each other. That in and of itself has taught me more about the human condition than any other environment could have.
As always,
Stay warm.
DC
