To Be Human

My name is Juliet, and I can not die. Now, I know what you are thinking. Everyone does eventually. That is true, but when I die, I wake up again. Never in the same body, never in the same place, and never in the same time period. The first time I discovered this, was the first time I "died". I was sixteen years old. While I was walking home from school in the winter, a car skidded onto the sidewalk because the driver lost control on the ice.

That was 500 years ago.

Every time I am reborn, I lose a piece of myself. I have been many people, I have seen many things. Every body that I inhabit, every life that I have lived have all been different. Today I woke up in the body of a young man fighting in world war 11. His name, or should I say my name, is Aaron.

Ten years ago, I was an eight year old child named Maddie. I don't know how long I will be hopping from body to body, person to person. I don't know why this is happening to me, maybe there is a reason, and maybe there's not. All I know, is that this is my story. It may sound like something straight out of a sci-fi novel, but to be able to understand, you have to believe in the impossible.

When I was Juliet, everything seemed right. I had a perfectly normal life. I woke up, ate breakfast, went to school. I had friends, I left my house on the weekends, I was carefree. I was just like any other teenager. I didn't care about anyone but myself. Let me clarify, I was not a bad person. I just didn't think about anything  bigger than myself.

I just lived through every day. Some days, I didn't even get out of bed. I was so oblivious to the world around me.

My whole life was turned sideways when I died. I didn't suffer very much, it was quick. There is a question as old as time that goes "where do you go when you die?" After all, energy cannot be made or destroyed, so where does our energy go when we are no more? I have never been dead for very long. But in the in between phase of transitioning into a new body, I am dead. It is not as exciting as you might think. It feels like nothing.

I used to dread those in between seconds. I used to be so eager to dive in head first into my new life. But now, I try my hardest stay in the in between for as long as possible. Being human is tiring. We all have our own unique minds, our own unique feelings. I am only one person, yet so many.

In all the lives that I have been in, I have seen how intricate each of us in. We are own web of thoughts and emotions and personalities. No two people are ever close to being alike. We are much too complicated. We all have our stories, we all have our own worlds. Everyone sees things in a different light.

I have been in people who are so pure at heart, and people who are so sinister and insidious, and people who are nothing. My second incarnation was to a man so dark inside, that I was starting to see things his way. He had a way of making the things that he was doing seem justifiable and right. The way his mind worked was something that I have never seen a sliver of in any other person.

What I am trying to say is that we are all so vastly different. We are a sea of feelings and unsaid words and thoughts. We are brilliant, and sinister, and kind and so much more. We are human.

We are beautiful. We care about each other and we care about ourselves. We want to see everything great in the world. When I was Maddie, I saw the world through a child's eyes. She was so innocent and pure, untouched by anything bad. But what surprised me when I stepped into her mind, was that we all had a piece of that childlike innocence and love in us. We are what is good in this world

We are also evil. We are deeply flawed and sinister. We are selfish and cruel. We all have invasive thoughts of wicked actions. We are so infatuated with the idea of being at the top that we will do anything to claw our way up. We hurt people on purpose with no remorse. We scream and shout and fight and yell. We are villainous and corrupt, and nothing will ever change that.

We are also devastatingly empty. We feel alone while walking on a crowded street. We feel like we are alone on this planet, even with all the people that inhabit it.

It is ok to feel all of these things, because I have seen, that we all feel it. We all get happy and sad. We are all good and evil. We all feel empty sometimes. We all have our own stories, and we all get our endings. We all have our own worlds. We are all human, and we are all beautiful.

My name is Juliet, and I can not die. I have been walking this Earth for 500 years, and I have been many people. Every person is different, no two are the same. This is my story, and it just so happens to be yours as well.