Teardrops

Chapter 40

SHELLY POV

Life. Everyone has tried to define it, so many times, so that if there was a number for infinity and a number for numberless, that's how many definitions it has been given. It's part of the human condition. You know what else is part of living? Dying, that's what. Death and pain and sadness. Life and death aren't opposites, they exist together in each and every moment.

According to string theory, there is no past or future. There is only the present, the now and everything coexists all at once, so that in every moment that you've existed, so has everything else that ever was. Does that make sense? Of course it doesn't, even if you understood. That's the mystery of life; it is one infinite paradox full of other paradoxes. By that reasoning, I simultaneously am already dead and will continue to live forever. Our every happiness will live on in a single string of the infinity of reality, but so does every sadness we have ever experienced. 

This is one moment I will be glad will last forever. It makes me happy to think that my life, or at least the latter parts of it, will be dotted with the echoic memories of laughter, of car rides with the radio turned up, of stolen kisses and tickle attacks and hushed midnight conversations that devolve into pillow fights and back into hushed words spoken affectionately against the backdrop of the cruel world, just as quickly. I like the idea that one doesn't have to be remembered a certain way to always exist exactly as they want to be, that somewhere, somehow, there is a best version of me that will never grow old, that will never need to say goodbye, that will never break the hearts of the ones that I love the most. 

So, life. Let's define it. Life is the thing that's keeping me physically writing these words in this notebook at this time. Life is the light in Donny's eyes when he smiles. The love in Lexi's smile. The kindness in the simple acts of holding the door open for a stranger, the crinkling in the eyes of an aged woman when she looks at her grandkids. The blood singing in the veins of animals, the force that feeds my cancer. 

I'm one of the lucky ones, I know. I still have my brain. I still have my soul. So many others lose every sense of self, they lose everything that makes them human. And even though they're still breathing on their own, their hearts are still beating by themselves... these people are not alive. They do not possess life. 

And my living heart is blessed for the ache that it feels when I think about how tragic that is. I am blessed for my ability to feel pain. 

But it still hurts. And I still hurt. 

I catch Donny and Lexi swapping concerned looks when I reveal that I'm hurting so I hide it. I fight the urge to reach up and hold my chest, resist the need to hold myself together as if I am in danger of literally falling apart, I swallow the gasps for air my weakened body so desperately screams for. Because, after all, it's just pain. Nothing to be afraid of, right?

But I am, dear readers. I am so scared. 

We're camping again today, and this time I just want to spend it with them instead of writing all about it. YOLO, right? Not according to string theory. But I want this moment to last forever, so I'm going to go live it.