Where I’ve Been

Hey guys! Contrary to the ominous title, I haven’t actually been anywhere. Rather, I’ve been taking an online creative writing course this past week (hence my lack of an update). Instead of giving you another update relating to corona or work or summer, I thought I’d share one of my finished pieces. It’s titled Entry #4105218 and I’ll just let you read it without giving anything else away. Hope you enjoy it! See you next week.

Entry #4,105,218

July 2nd, 2019

Dear Diary,

Today, at 9:38 in the morning, I met an old man who embraced me with a warmth I had never felt before. His smile glistened as he outstretched his arms.

“I’ve been waiting to meet you for a long time,” He said. He had been waiting for me. Waiting for me.

Before him, I had grasped a little girl in my arms, exactly 3 years, 8 months, 2 weeks, and 4 days old. She kept asking me questions. Who are you? What’s your name? Where’s my mommy?

Most people mistake me for a cruel, unforgiving monster that has no care for human life. Humans, in fact, have always intrigued me. Never before has a species had a complex understanding of who I am and my job within the circle of life. No species makes me feel like they can.

I have learned early on that I am not the face people expect to see when they move on. I am not the dark, clothed figure wielding a scythe nor am I the pure, satin covered angel. What I am is not something any living person shall know.

Each person I greet tells me a little bit about humanity. For something that has been here for so long, I can never fully grasp the true meaning of being human.

Love, as it turns out, is one of the main connections I make between the humans I meet. Those who are aware of who I am ponder after a lost loved one, as if I am some omnipotent god. I am no god; I am just a messenger. A train traveling back and forth between worlds, holding passengers with one way tickets.

But love is more complicated than the bonds between humans. It’s fragile, but stronger than steel. One can learn a lot about humans by the way a little boy cries for his mother.

However, this only teaches me to be human is not to love. If being human means love, then all the wars, all the massacres, all the hate would not have resulted in a single drop of bloodshed. No, humans don’t love each other.

So then, it has to be survival. That’s what drives each human to make the choices they make. Every human wants to survive.

But it’s more than that. Humans would avoid conflict, if all they wanted to do was survive. The way the streets are packed, the words flinging out of their mouths, those are not people who want to survive. They want to do more than survive. They want to live.

Live in a world where their sons and daughters don’t have to worry about moving on in a school, on the street, in their cars, on a plane, in the back alleyway behind the sketchy gas station. To live in a world not triumphed by hatred.

I’ve met these dictators of hate, just as I have met their victims. They are so different, but connected through the shared thread of humanity. 

In the end, every human meets me. To be human is to die.

Nothing lives forever. But humans actively understand what it means to die. After all they live for, I am their final goal. The last whispered word as a man bleeds out, the last sunrise a pair of eyes sees before falling into darkness, the last breath of air forced out of empty lungs. That’s me. No matter what they do, I am inevitable, and they know that.

Perhaps this makes me more human than I imagined.

-Entry #4,105,218

-By Lauren Pasquale