Writer Games | Death Wish & 51

Task Six: On My Own /SF - Maria Thisbe [5]

There is little else to  do now that we have been given a way out. There is nothing to say except  to decide who will take that first step of glory back outside. I do not  know how to feel; I must admit I do not feel much of anything. Perhaps  it is because nothing seems true, nothing seems real from these events.  Of course, it must be—all of this— but time has moved too fast; I wish I  had discovered more, seen more here than I will when I walk out of this  place.

Back when I was first  starting my studies, I can remember I felt the same way. Strangely  empty, strangely sad, strangely nothing at all. People had told me  should have given up, should have went into a more stable and easy  career. I was harsh because of my confusion—I was and am distant and I'm  far too abrasive to be much fun to many people. Perhaps that was why I  decided to continue on, to sign up for this expedition, because I had  hoped something would be different. I cannot seem to change though, I  feel like to keep up this facade of slight achievement I must put on a  mask of indifference as my youthful years have slipped away from my  grasp. I've lost years I cannot get back because I cannot change.

Nothing here—nothing out  there, either—seems to satisfy my wish for something more. I want  everything yet I am not prepared to deal with the consequences, the  choices I would have to make to achieve such worldly desires. My life  has been this one search for something greater but even here there is  nothing for me. There is little anywhere for me to be satisfied, perhaps  that is the true problem.
They've now informed me I am to go out  first in a unanimous ruling based on who was announced first and I truly  do not know what will happen when I leave. Will I become famous? Or  will they have forgotten my name and the world continued spinning? I  leave the area that seemed so familiar yet so strange. I left Alicia  behind. As I think of her I realize just how little I truly knew her. I  doubt we will keep in touch. That is how it goes. As the walk becomes  far longer and far lonelier, I feel drawn back: back to the mysterious  caverns of this area, back to the unknown rather than the ever  dissatisfying outside.

Outside seems almost  foreign. A strange word I do not want to familiarize myself with once  again. Outside I must see those who looked down upon me and those who  will give me a smile and a hug yet do not care enough to ask about what  happened here unless I bring it into conversation. Such is the way of my  life, where I am noticed little yet always go back to those who only  notice when they are in need of me. What is out there that is far better  than in here? I will go back to having my job once more; I will not  have gained anything more than a story to begin sharing until someone  draws the focus away from me.

Perhaps that is the  cruel irony: that one only cares when someone dies. They only cared of  Tesla and Wegener and Galileo, of van Gogh and Dickinson and Poe once  they had passed on. It was what got a story. People would spend their  entire lives trying to achieve something to never see their impact and I  must say with all sincerity I do not want to live such a life. These  people, those people, all of them are leeches, life-suckers who I cannot  help but crawl back to with my papers as they reject them and stomp on  me like some house-pest time and time again.
I should probably  prepare some sort of inward speech for when I leave. Perhaps I would  embellish my story a bit, speak of things that never happened, yet I  cannot bring myself to imagine my telling my family such a story. But I  must say that whatever happens when I leave, I do not think I will ever  be the same again.

Perhaps years in the  future I will be broke and penniless and wishing I had done more with  such an opportunity as I have had here, far from the common world.  Perhaps I will regret everything, yet I know I will still yearn for that  longing of admiration I will never have. Like an illness, I feel  compelled back to those who have hurt me, who only care of the work I do  absentmindedly than of my ideas.

I will lead a lonely  life above the shop once more, back to my mediocrity and back to my  menial job without much to say of what I may have gotten from this  expedition. No new ideas like Marie Curie always seemed to procure. No  new theories had presented themselves to me. I was little more than the  work I had produced so far—that is of such a small quantity my worth  could be summed up by my recent paper: The Pentaquark and the Subatomics  Within. It was where I theorized that within the tiniest quark yet to  be found there must be some sort of smaller underlying particle, unknown  and useless until discovered.

Perhaps that was why I  was ridiculed by those greater than I. I had only ever been interested  in the philosophy of such, and not of the current theories. Einstein was  who I was secretly trying to become, to finish his work rather than get  into the nitty-gritty of the world of quantum. Quantum theory was  simply theory and yet everything bigger than that is so minuscule that  it almost seems pointless to invest in discovering the particles, much  less who we ourselves are.

Who are we to assume we  can know the barest of our minds? Yet I have been pushed aside my whole  life, I have been largely ignored unless I do something risqué and  damaging to my careers which has so oft happened I can scarcely count.  Why then are we to invest in who we are if we do not even agree on ideas  such as the simplest theories of the world? How can we even fathom  discovering one greater infinite when there are an infinite amount of  smaller infinites waiting to be discovered? It is the paradox of life,  where nothing seems to matter so long as there are greater or smaller  issues at hand.

There should be a saying  for such a life as mine, and I am truly sorry to become pitiful and  sorrowful yet I cannot bring myself to muster a smile as I walk the dark  passage as a glimmer of life peeks through a door and I can hear  unfamiliar voices calling in the distance. They will expect me to be  beaming or to be half-dead and perhaps I am neither and as that will not  be exciting I will once more drift into the oblivion of being an  in-between—in between praise and rejection, in between happiness and  loneliness, in between earth and the cosmos.

I must apologize, I  truly must. I know how loathing I must seem, I am sorry to myself and to  those around me as I know I feel entitled to something greater, as  though I expect there is something to be waiting for me when the  universe tells me I should expect nothing. Yet the universe also tells  me I must expect the impossible, must expect everything, so is it so  far-fetched that I should be so self-concerned about my own being rather  than that of the greater good?

I know I will never stop  searching until my last breath for something, for anything to help me  along in finding a purpose. Ten years into my work and I still do not  have a purpose, but I wish I will soon, for better or for worse. For  finding meaning or for life or for answers to questions not yet formed, I  know I cannot stop fighting to find a purpose. I know deep within me no  matter how much I feel lonely that there is some sadistic part of me  that enjoys it, enjoys making me question life as I also question my  profession. No one knows how worried I am for who I have become; not  because of threats, but because of how I have lived my only one. I fear I  will keep searching for answers just beyond my grasp, forever stuck  slightly behind someone else, trailing in their stardust as I make my  own puddle of dust behind, just slightly less bright.

But brightness, I have  learned, does not determine the size or significance of a galaxy. Light  only means it is noticeable, for now. Because everything, I know, will  turn back to the darkness, back to what it was. But I cannot go back to  stardust; it is in human nature to keep fighting for answers, to keep  thinking life is something we are graciously given rather than a  reaction of an action. I know it is futile for me to think of such  things; it is redundant to fool myself, but I must fool myself or else I  would truly live the life of someone who is never recognized, who never  gets their after-death fame, who never gets praised. Yet I cannot help  but go back, stepping into the light with a smile on my face as I feed  back the drivel I had so despised before. I go back to the stardust that  calls out to me. The universe has plans, I cannot ignore that simple  statement, but it is difficult to accept what will happen will, and what  will not, will not. I must go back, and I do.