Sometimes, at three o’clock in the morning, when there are no guzzling cars whizzing by, and no cacophony of barking dogs, and no lights to disturb the peace of darkness, I like to go outside and lay myself flat on the ground. I stretch out my arms, grasp at tuffs of grasp, feel the dew brush across the back of my neck, how it seems to seep into my skin. I like to look up at the sky, especially the stars. Sometimes I look so long the stars seem as if they begin to flicker in and out of life, like the weight of my single pair of eyes on them is too much to bear, even for celestial objects. Sometimes I like to pretend that I can see you in the stars. Instead of the big dipper, I imagine the curve of your jaw. I pretend that the star jutting out just a bit is the point of your chin, that the three grouped together on the side is your ear, that the two dimmer ones are your eyes. And when they flicker away I imagine you’re blinking in disbelief. Disbelief that yeah, I’m still here. Yes, in the hundreds of thousands of stars in the ever-expanding sky, I can still find you.
Then I shut my eyes. I count to ten then back down to one. And when I open them again, I realize that it’s just stars. It’s not even the big dipper, let alone your face; it’s just a clump of stars. And those that flicker? Planes that happened to be passing by. I read later that most of the stars we can see from Earth are already dead. They’re just so far away that by the time their light reaches us, they’ve already been erased from existence.
I think that’s how people are, too. That by the time you realize how important they are, they’re already gone. Think about it: Vincent Van Gogh. He was the laughing stock of the artistic community back in his time. It wasn’t until years later, after he committed suicide, that his paintings were deemed renowned. His unique take on the universe wasn’t appreciated until there was no one left to give that appreciation.
Are you like Van Gogh? Are you waiting for the world to say “Alright, I was wrong, you are special”? Everyone contributes something to the world; but whether that sometimes is remembered or not is what makes someone remarkable. And you were not remarkable.
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