Zemblanity

• Punnadhorn Noradechanunt, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2020

How does one feel when they look into themselves and see… nothing? Not even a mirror will be able to reflect the image of me. Surely there must be something one can see within themselves. However, when I look into myself, I see nothing. The stark emptiness of a canvas that is within me, and no paintbrush dare come close.

It shouldn’t hurt, as I’ve become used to the stinging pain in my chest. But it does hurt. It hurts more each day and there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s as though I am stuck in a glass box and everyone else is walking around me, invisible to them. Not in their lives. Unimportant. I guess that is what I am, unimportant. A speck of dust in the entirety of the universe and this very land my feet walk on is just as small, as minuscule as a wink of a star. To compare myself as that lightens me, a little easier to accept, and a little weight falls off my shoulders as I am able to breathe once more. Though the sting is ever present. To compare myself as absolutely nothing in the eyes of the universe allows me to feel at peace knowing everyone else standing, walking here will be nothing for the universe too. It reassures me that if anything is to happen, I won’t be alone when I’m gone.

It is the sudden wave of … anguish, of exhaustion, of fear, that rolls in all at the same time. It doesn’t choose when to strike. It attacks at the most random of times, in unpredictable places too. Oh, so overwhelmingly unbearable hostility. For one, I may be happily content with the life I am living, with the people that accept me as me. Then, the waves overshadow me. Overthrow the balance of my feet on the concrete ground that is before me, flip me through various channels over and over to its amusement. I end up tipping the scale once more.

Any living person would want to be assured that whatever they do it is not wrong. What they do is just and won’t be condemned by anything or by anyone. Yet for me, I do not think reassurance will ever be enough. The absolute calm before the storm, they say. Mornings become a constant struggle. I don’t know how long I’ve been feeling this way; the struggle. Perhaps I am to be blamed for sleeping so late past midnight, unable to awaken refreshed in the mornings, but even when it’s ten I struggle to get up and continue my morning routines. Although I don’t have enough sleep my eyes would open wide and I am able to register the world before me.

I must say, a part of me misses and is missing. For when I peer into myself I still see the same old blank canvas that envelops me. Some things don’t change, I should know better by now.