INTRO
If a frail child were to be released to this world alone, what would happen?
Would the child struggle, resist, and live? Could there be a hopeful outcome for those who were abandoned, those who were left by their family, by their father, mother, siblings, and all? Such a child, devoid of protection and an absence of a nurturing family. A child who has not experienced the warmth of a parent's embrace and the comforting words of siblings.
What will happen… what will happen…
Oh right.
They get destroyed, they break down, collapse, and eat themselves. They waste away and die. Children who have no protection from the cruelty of this world face ruin, they wake up to nothing, live up to nothing, and ultimately expect nothing.
Should a child be taken care of, should a child be given warmth, comfort, and protection, a child to live a life of adoration would thrive in this world, much like a delicate seed planted in fertile soil. Just as a plant would flourish in the right environment, a well-tended plant that bathes in sunlight is regularly watered and with its roots deep into a rich soil. A child is all the same.
But, what if those that made the child, its parents, its siblings, slowly… slowly… bit by bit… little by little… be taken away?
Would the plant wither?
Would the child still be able to survive? Would they still thrive? Or would they be the same as the children who had nothing? Would they waste away and die like an unfed dog, would they collapse like a building with no pillar, or would they break like a fallen vase.
What would they do?
Ah, that is a question I cannot answer.
Pitiable, yes, quite pitiable really. Not only are these children been made an outcast by society but also by their family. Oh oasis, a place of comfort and protection, our sanctuary, where shall you be now? Has the greenery within your pond already withered? Or has the pond reduced to a mere puddle, the water that has conserved and kept life within this this vast empty desert cannot be seen anymore, where has your water gone?
Even if a child is still a child, it can decide for itself, fend for itself, and live for itself. For a child is able to do so as they are living creatures themselves.
No matter how unfair the world is?
No matter how unfair the world is.
That is… not the answer I expected.
A child reflects its parents,
but those who have none shall reflect the world.
. . .
PROLOUGE
My surroundings are dark. My body aching with pain. There are faint streaks of light coming through the cracks of the now destroyed ceiling.
I couldn't move, with how much rubble has piled on me, how could I possibly move? I'm now just lying within this wreckage unable to do anything. Half my body was covered with slabs of concrete. It may be because of my spine breaking that I couldn't feel anything down below. Not feeling anything, at least in this circumstance, is better.
The state of my hands are also terrible but not to the point of being broken, I can still move my hands slightly. My breathing became coarse due to a broken lung and to the dust waving around. In this situation is where people would feel despair. But in my case, it was strangely calming. Not that I was delighted in any way, I'm only glad that my life would be over.
I can no longer suffer.
Battered by the unreasonable ideals as well as irrational opinions of society and with the negligence of my own parents, I hated my life. My once innocent mind and ideals now stained, my once upright sense of justice deterred for the worse, and my once creative ideas I had now shoved to a coffin made by my own. My old self loomed over me like an ever repeating cassette tape in an old radio, though now broken.
It is said the world can only be viewed by your own perspective, a view made by the mind. But, what makes a man?
In the end, I spent my days in solidarity, everyday that passed was mundane and sickening, I'm a prisoner of my own mind. My mind is in a continuous state of anxiety, seeking perfection in an inherently imperfect world, eyes of people always glued to mistakes and their mouth made to judge said imperfection. A ridicule. It's stupid.
Even if my life is rotten as an apple in a garbage can, it seems that the world wants me to suffer more. A building, a whole building collapsed with me in it, the corpses of people who I used to call colleagues scattered the floor. The incident should have killed me instantly, yet it left me to agonize, slowly and painfully. Little by little would I suffer before facing my inevitable death, like an aging wine made to be savored, need I say more?
Even though the world had constantly spat on my face and made me struggle for my very existence, my soul felt cleansed. No longer would I suffer, no longer would I face the people that made my heart empty, in death I would be free. I would be nothing.
It is when there is nothing, there started something.
A blank slate, empty and devoid of any content, is where an artist starts to work their talent, a beginning of a masterpiece. An empty mind does not erode but gives space for its ideas, like an empty warehouse it would eventually get filled, may it be beautiful or may it be downright ludicrous. Yet, in the vast emptiness, there's a peculiar comfort.
Well… now my mind would be empty, and emptiness should my life be as I approach death.
Ah, finally my mind escapes its prison, finally I am able to rot and pass away. The pain I feel throughout my body was now numbing, the world around me grew darker and darker, my death approaches, the darkness ensues.
. . .
Like how a sapling grew form a seed, and how a tree grew from a sapling, the tree cannot go back to being a seed can it not?
It can only reproduce and make more of itself as it grows.
The more rings that the tree has, the older it is and the closer it is to withering and becoming fertile soil for the seeds it itself created.
Though the tree cannot become a seed, it makes seeds for the future so its kind could continue, for if its death approaches its time ends, yet the time for its seeds only begins.
And despite that, time continues, however time feels insignificant.