Hollow

I thought it would be different. One, simple quick motion and that would be it; nothing more, nothing less. But I found that in the spaces that I thought would be utter darkness, cold and black in solitude, there were multiple shades of grey that were intricately blended together. Where I expected to feel completely void of all emotions with a satisfactory emptiness hollowing inside me, there was still a pulse in the air surrounding me that tugged at the edges of what humanity I seemingly had left. I felt like I was in a world all my own where I somehow had made the impossible possible. But I knew I wasn't alone, for although I could not see or hear anyone or anything around me, that pulse that I felt in those shades of grey were not all my own. It seemed that even in death there was life.

It was a curse yet a blessing that although I was here I was not hollow. I still had my original thoughts and opinions and was still welcome to create new ones. I had reached the end but I encountered no rules, boundaries, or limitations. My curse was that even though I could still control my actions and decisions, what was there to act or decide on? I was in "nothing." The pulse slowly came to irritate me as it seemed to beckon me to make some kind of grueling decision as to where I was supposed to go. There were no directions, no options, everything was exactly the same in every aspect - it was "nothing." I had expected to see everything but this; a blinding white light, clouds, perhaps a temple, deceased family members. Anything but this...

They say that on the brink of death your life flashes before your eyes. So the question was was I not yet dead or did I just completely skip that part and go straight to whatever is supposed to happen next? Time was irrelevant here. Had it been two minutes? Hours? Months? Was it even important here? All a teenager wants is complete freedom (or so they think) and now that I literally had grasped it I didn't know what to do with myself. It was almost pathetic how lost I was. Who gets lost in "nothing?" I tried silencing myself, but when there's nothing around you you quickly realize it's an impossible feat. I wanted it to stop. Just in one, simple quick motion I wanted it to stop; nothing more, nothing less.

No thoughts. No words. No feelings. Everything that "nothing" is supposed to be. I had to wonder if this prison cell is what was considered "limbo" - completely trapped yet free at the exact same time. I mulled it over in my head for what felt like quite some time. But in order to be in limbo I had to be dead...right? How would you actually define living? In my dictionary I used to just think it meant breathing, having a pulse and just in general feeling and thinking; but I had all of those things here. I breathed the unfamiliar musk of the blended greys, the pulse in the air vibrated to my very core, and just in saying all this my ability to think and feel were obviously very well in tact. Perhaps I should have thrown all logic out the window, but the only familiar things here to me were my thoughts and morals and logic and it was comforting to have them to count on when nothing else made sense.

But it seemed that even those three things seemed to be slowly evanescing. Everything that I had ever known was fading away and was being replaced with the absurd, a process that seemed impossible to control. It was even more frustrating than the fact that I wasn't hollow in the first place. The only way I could think to stop the absurdity was to counteract it with memories of things that I knew for fact to be true and above all logical. But it wasn't enough for only me to say it was true anymore. I needed assurance, someone or something to say, "You're not crazy, your logic is sound don't worry." But there were no voices here other than my own.

The pulse had a rhythym all its own and there was nothing that I could do or say to influence its strict repetitive pattern. The blended greys may have been more sympathetic as they swirled around each other in a calm serene manner, but they seemed only interested in how they could make their own dance more fluid. They were completely clueless of everything that they enveloped, including myself. They all made a beautiful harmony; the beating pulse, the dancing blended greys, everything that I was not a part of. And yet they still waited for something. As beautiful as I thought they were they seemed incomplete in a sense. Rather than being confused or irritated with them I found myself fascinated with it all. If I couldn't make sense of them logically, perhaps I could approach it on a more personal level.

If I had in fact died and this was where i was cursed/blessed to spend the rest of eternity then I suppose the most logical thing to do was to make the best of the situation. But how do you make the best of "nothing?" In wanting so desperately to finally become a part of the "nothing" was I finally hollow? Now even the logic was absurd. By trying to understand what was happening and why I was so different I actually had encountered the opposite and had been consumed by it all. Had I been hollow all along? The world around me, the unfamiliar musk of a breath of fresh air, the pulse around me of the living that was indeed not my own, the blended greys of the faces of people that my hollow self had long forgotten. The realization it me hard and suddenly just in one, simple quick motion I wanted it to stop; nothing more, nothing less.