Our Disappointed Hearts

I walked slowly and leisurely upon the long streets of my hometown. It was a cool night, and the breeze sent chills up my spine as each gust of wind struck my skin lightly, and swiftly. I couldn’t help but notice the extreme beauty of the sky above me. It was trance-like, with each star shining and winking down at me, and the vague pink left in the east of the sky by the setting sun. How did the sun and stars live harmoniously in the sky? It fascinated and captivated me, that the two could live as such, despite the fact that they represented two completely separate times of the Earth’s sky seen from below. Nature seemed to know no boundaries, and heeded to no-one. Even the most basic of humanities rules of probability and factuality was broken by the simple remaining light of the sun as it settled down to rest and shine upon a new part of the Earth.

As I pondered this, my leisure walk slowed to a crawl, and then a halt altogether. My knees felt weak beneath my body weight, my head spun and my surroundings faded, and I collapsed onto the sidewalk. I hadn’t eaten for a few days, simply because of a lack of appetite, and I knew my body was faltering due to lack of nutrients. I sat up, and lay my head upon my knees for support and closed my eyes. My body would recover in a few minutes, and I would then be able to stand and walk again and return home. Black outs, or “white outs” as I referred to them, because of their tendency to make everything turn white when I had them, frequented me often. It was most likely just a chemical imbalance or something benign and minute, nothing to worry about, but a nuisance regardless, seeing as it made me dizzy and likely to collapse, as I just did. I could hardly even walk in public without worrying about someone thinking I was on drugs or something.

After righting myself and shaking off the dizziness I began to walk again.. Home this time. It was getting late, and I was cold anyways. It took awhile for me to regain complete composure and consciousness of my movements and steps, and although it was bothersome, it felt good. I was exhausted now, and I knew I would be able to sleep throughout the entire night without waking.

For some reason the walk home was a lot lonelier than the one I was enjoying before I collapsed. I felt as though I was stranded… that no-one cared, mostly because after instances like this, I knew that it was true. My mother, who was an amazing doctor with a high stature in medicine and practice, knew nothing of her own daughters physical and mental troubles. She ignored the signs, and saw nothing of them, when even the most ignorant of fools would take note of them and put the puzzle together.

I sighed and stuffed my hands in my jacket pockets, the wind was starting to become painfully cold, and was no longer pleasant against my skin. The last remnants of the sun had faded from the sky, and only the bright stars of night remained. They twinkled and shone, but they told me nothing, as I seemed to hope desperately for. They were simply there… just like me. Only I wasn’t beautiful and shining, or interesting and available for the entire world to see. But we both seemed to be ignored more often than not, even when we did exactly what we did best. It simply didn’t matter.

Long ago the stars were looked upon as a blessing… just as my mother had once looked at me as a blessing. She loved me once, she cared for me once…but now the stars and I simply were not seen. We weren’t important enough to notice anymore. My mother and humanity had looked away from us, and moved on to other things.