Welcome to Myopia

Nothing Much

I'm supposed to be here, but I can't help feeling lost. At least I've already decided what I'm going to do when I grow up.

I'm going to donate my organs to science.

Now, I haven't told anyone my plan yet, because they'd probably think me morbid, but it will happen. After all, this is my body, and when I'm dead, I can do whatever I want with it.

There's supposed to be something wrong with me. I do not understand the symbolic reasoning behind being laid in a wooden box, buried beneath soil and a big stone plaque, and wept over. I would like to matter even after all my bodily functions shut down. It would be nice to know that all the parts of me would become adventurers, travelers, life-savers. My heart might be the reason that a toddler wouldn't die of a rare cardiac disease. My liver might save an alcoholic who deserves a second chance. My eyes could give a blind person sight.

(There are so many blind people now. The weird thing, though, is that their vision tends to be perfect.)

I would live on in them. Parts of me would. I would be the reason they live.

I know not everyone likes the body one is stuck with, but one is stuck with it, after all, and I love mine because it means I can run and climb trees and hug people. It make me sad to see people call themselves and other people ugly, but I can't do anything about them. I can't cut their head open and turn a key in their brain so they'll love themselves. Brains don't work that way, nor minds, nor people.

I have to admit, though, that sometimes I don't love my body so much. I haven't any disabilities - no-one would call me an inspiration, though I don't understand why everyone with a disability automatically becomes an inspiration. Though it's cute and sympathetic, it's dehumanizing and ridiculous, I think. But don't trust me, I'm eleven years old.

Eleven is a lovely word, I think.

Now, as I was saying, I don't have any disabilities. Or at least, everyone tells me so. I am perfectly — you know. My eyesight's 20-20, 20-15 in my right eye. I've never broken a bone. I'm in the 56th percentile for height and the 60th for weight. I look my age. My hair is dull brown and comes down to the shoulders, and my eyes match my hair (except my eyes don't come down to my shoulders). I have twenty phalanges and a nose and two ears, no deficiencies nutritional or otherwise. I'm a B student and sometimes I get an A, but that doesn't have anything to do with my body - though it might.

I like to run around, but not so much that you'd call me hyperactive. I listen but I also speak. I'm loud but not too loud, and really I'm not that noticeable but I am. I have a lot of friends, but not so many that you would call me super popular. I don't really care about that.

I guess I've realized that the thing that doesn't make me ordinary is how I think, because, well, I'm not afraid to. I don't talk about my thoughts ever, to anyone, and nobody knows this now but you. But I write. I write about things people would think are strange, or wrong. I write about people who get sucked into black holes and have to murder their families. I write about the ghosts of my friends who got ripped apart by machinery. And now I'll write about the lives of the people who got my organs after I died. (Except I'm never going to die.)

You're my fictional audience. Perhaps my greatest friend. And I am honored to know you. So I will write to you.

Well, I've never finished one of my stories. I can't focus that much. I lack motivation. I'm not creative enough to write a good ending. Besides, who's going to read it? I'm afraid to show it to anyone. You see, another reason why I'm ordinary is because I'm afraid of what people think of me. Or rather, it worries me. I want to be liked. That's fine. That's human.

Doesn't sound like an eleven-year-old, you think? Hmm...

《《 Please comment if you find this a worthwhile read! Tell me what you liked, what needs improvement, anything helpful! It isn't hard to do, and it's unbelievable how much difference a single comment can make! 》》

Fun fact: two months after I wrote this, I read Unwind, by Neal Shusterman, which has very much to do with organ donors — and the ideas, so to speak, of life and death. There is a free PDF online. If you would like to read it, the link is in the comments below.