The Dirt Beyond the Grass

Reflections upon oneself

I am dying.

These are quite cheery opening words, I know, but it is the truth. Oh, no, I am not falling from this earth in the traditional sense but I am certainly losing.

At the mere age of nineteen, I lay here in my room, on my bed with its morose sheets, surrounded by blindingly blue walls, and I am dying. It is a phrase I keep repeating to myself over and over, and over. A light jazz drifts into my room from below where my father plays music. It calms me, because it shows that the world moves without me. All existences are equally unimportant which inevitably makes them equally important.

Thinking like this calms me, knowing that when I’m long gone nothing will change. Wars will happen, lives will move on as they ought to, more will die, children will be born.

I sit up on my bed. I’m not going to do anything, because honestly what could possibly be the point. A moment’s recognition. A stilted conversation with friends I never knew. It does not matter what I do, have done, or will do, because it will all come to the same. I look out my window towards the neighbor’s house.

Well, not out my window, because the blinds are covering it and as much as I have a vague wish for super powers and adventure, I do not have x-ray vision.

I stare at the window for five minutes.

Suddenly, I get up, and walk quickly out the door. Why? Well. Even I need a bathroom break from sulking. A girl can only cry over the miseries of her existence for so long until she needs to pee.

I return to my room, leaving the door ajar, hands freshly awash and bladder relieved.

I feel the vague urge to do something. What do I want to do?

Why? Wait.

“Why?” I murmur aloud. I am honestly confused. Why would I want to do anything? That’s dumb.

I immediately feel ten years younger at the use of the word dumb and I roll my eyes at myself.

I look down at the palms of my hands as I stand just inside the door of my room. My sweatpants are sliding down my a*s, and my hoodie is four sizes too big. I wiggle my fingers.

How do we even do this moving thing anyway. Not ‘ How do nerves work’ but just, how is it possible that my consciousness is the thing functioning in my body? Why aren’t I in a cloud or a parakeet?

I look blankly around my room as I wonder as to why I wasn’t born from an egg, a tiny robin. There are sketchbooks strewn everywhere, paintbrushes left unclean in cups of water. I will be the first to say that what I did there is the worst thing one could do to paint brushes, but I don’t think I’ll be painting anymore. Ever.

What was the point of this whole instance anyway? Ah. Yes. Death. See, when a person like me, who isn’t terminally ill, or who isn’t in the middle of a mind blowing adventure just dies, it doesn’t mean the body withers away, or that there will be a funeral.

It means my personality disappears. The very thing that defined my being is taken away. I find no joy, no anger, and no type of emotion in anything. I eat because my body requires food. I sleep because I have to. I go to school because society requires it of me to make money in the future and eat. At that point it all comes full circle.

It means I feel nothing. Life washes over me, I feel no attachments, I don’t feel happy nor sad, I feel nothing.

So why am I saying this? I don’t know. Perhaps it means that everything I have just said is a lie.

Or maybe everything anyone has ever said is a lie, and at the same time it is truth.

I am human, so that also means I am everchanging. While what I have just revealed may have been true and likely will be true again, I feel a vague sense of want. I want to do something, So I toss out the few ruined paintbrushes, I dig my laptop out from under a pile of clothes, I pick up a pencil, paper, turn on my laptop, and I start over.

I draw anew.

Author's Note

Please tell me anything you think of my writing! This is my first time posting original work anywhere so, I'd love to know.