The Memories of The Lonely

As the story goes, everyone wants to have it all in life. Unlike most people, I have too much in this life, mostly the burden of life itself. Someone must have hated me in my past life. Not that I could remember it. I've been alive longer than anything. My breath was the first instance of existence in the universe. Most people that do not understand how the universe truly works would say I was blessed. I beg to differ. I have been cursed from the moment I was born. People who live normal lives just don't get it. Even if you had everything unfairly taken away from you, you had the warm, or cold, embrace of death. I did not have such ways of forgetting or resetting. Every scar I have has been with me forever and will be with me forever. I have seen many worlds; many races are born and die out. Humans are just the latest version I have chosen to align with. Humans appeal to me. They have so many worries in their heads, but they don't realize the luxury they possess. I once knew of a world where people lived thousands of years longer than humans. They became so mundane and numb to emotions that eventually they all just disappeared. I won't tell you how the disappearance was played out, you will curse me and probably need therapy. But speaking of the luxury of humans, let me tell you about the experience I had with them.

 I first discovered Earth when my old civilization came here to find a new home after they destroyed their own. They did not last long. The conditions of the new world were too hard on them. Being assimilated into their species for a long period of time, I was not spared from the consequences of their greed. I went through millennia of pain before my new life evolved well enough for me to take part in it again. After the billions pf years I spent floating around the universe, pain was nothing to me. I hadn't realized it until I met the humans, but my emotions have long been forgotten. As well as the desire to live.

 The first person I met that interested me was a man that went by the name of Anubis. He was worshipped as a god by his people, and later, the descendants of those people. He understood me. He knew that what I had been through could not be fixed but prayed for me anyway. In the end, I watched him get stabbed by his own followers. He had shared what I had taught him. And it scared the weak-willed. Another one of the many people I held close to me, gone to the endless void I shall never imagine. Not that guilt wasn't anything of importance to me, I simply had too much of it that I kept it behind closed doors.

I didn't have any intention of it, but I had more of an impact on humanity than I thought. A passing merchant asked me for advice once, because he claimed he had run out of ideas and had no purpose left. I gave him a gift of a staff I had gotten from an old shepherd, and I told him one thing to try to soothe him, "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil." It was a play on how life without a purpose is not life, and he still was alive, so he should fear no emptiness, as there was already a purpose for him. Imagine my surprise when the same man cited me under the fake name I had given in his book, "The Holy Bible."

As humans evolved, I stood on the sidelines, never getting involved with anybody because I knew how it all would end. I have been through this countless times at this point. Now it was only entertainment to me to watch civilizations rise and fall. So, you can imagine my amusement as a war was fought all over the known world in my alias's name. So much death, but I had no care. Nothing mattered, they would all perish anyway. I held that thought for a long time. Of course it didn't last forever though. That was when I met her.

 One day, during my long sleep after the first world war started, I was jolted awake. A woman was standing over me, no prettier than the average person, and no more impressive than any other being I had seen. At first, I disregarded her. That was until I looked into her eyes. The first thing I said in 30 years ended up being the best and worst thing I have ever said. "Are you alright?" She looked at me with those dead eyes and said the thing I had only heard from my own mind all this time, "why wouldn't I be, life is great."

 Twenty years later, I was walking around on the street when I saw something familiar. That woman. She was just as plain as the first time I had seen her, but one thing led me to run across the street to her with a desperate look in my eye. She looked exactly the same. I asked her to come back to my place as I had something to show her. When we got back to my temporary house, I stabbed myself. I had done this many times before when my delusions had gotten the better of me and I'd had enough. But this time was different, she knew what I was doing. She said something that made a tear come to my eye for the first time in a very long time. "It's not just me anymore, finally I will be released."

 I had the time of my many lives with her, although I never asked her name. I knew that she wouldn't want to tell me, names for us had meanings that are best left unsaid. For hundreds of years, I lived with her. But nothing lasts forever, not even forever itself. Immortality is but a concept, and all concepts have a last page. I had yet to reach that page. I don't think I ever will. Even the best things were all taken away from me. Simply because I was determined not important enough for them. I cursed at the universe for hundreds of years, but of course it never heard me. Because I was never talking to anything that could understand. Just like everything else.

 Earth was gone, everything was gone. Occasionally I would remember the life I used to live, the best and longest of many. Before I had died along with the peace of my turbulent era, that woman. Before I knew it, the last light in this universe had died. But I was still alive. Even after the last black hole became nothing. More or less I was still existing, not living, simply existing, just as dust in the wind. That was until the first light I had seen in countless ages appeared in front of my eyes.

 Someone stood over me in a uniform, looked like military. The words he said to me next shocked me more than the countless deaths and mysteries I had seen over my lifetime. "Welcome back patient 2758, how was the program." The rush of emotions that were felt within me was nothing like I had ever felt before. A rage and desire so large it dwarfed the size of my life. Or was it even my life?

Nobody left that room alive. As the last person was sitting in the corner bleeding out, I said to him this. "Everyone wants to live forever, but no one considers that forever never wanted to live." He looked at me. Understanding my truth but terrified anyway. Probably for the best, I guess. As I brought his gun to my head, I thought of the woman again. And I cried. She was never even real, none of it was. As I squeezed down on cold metal, I knew the feeling I had longed for but had eluded me, I finally understood. The darkness, no darker than the end of the stars, but special to me, because the peace it brought never ended.

 I should have known that as that darkness enveloped me and made my body light and free, the light would return once again. Such a harsh light, I found it quite unpleasant, but not as unpleasant as my realization. I had woken up, back on Earth. The merchant stood over me and stated, "The savior has resurrected, long live the son of God, Jesus Christ." That was when I knew that this world never planned to go easy on me by letting me slip from its grasp. I was its plaything, forever to be surrounded by death and betrayal, as the one who carried the only thing it ever wanted to hold. The memories of the lonely.