Non-Existence: A Journey. (Short story)

I couldn’t breathe. I taught people how to breathe for a living, and I couldn’t breathe. I have taught myself countless breathing techniques… And still I could not breathe.  

It was as the air didn’t want to meet my lungs: it didn’t even went into my nose. I opened my mouth still looking for some air, but it was like I was underwater. I was going to drown. 

Reality was there but I only saw darkness. My brain wasn’t functioning right. I could clearly see what surrounded me and yet, I was trapped inside a strange dark room. I tried to relax. I tried to surrender. I tried to let go of what held me so tightly to dear life. I tried to accept what was yet to come. 

My heart broke into a thousand pieces that I purposely left scattered across the dark glass floor. I didn’t need my heart anymore, I thought. My whole body started to feel less  and less real.  My feet disappeared first. There was nothing holding me to ground anymore. But I still couldn’t fly. 

My legs came next. When it got to my hands I was already giving in. I didn’t want them anyway. I didn’t want them wanting. I didn’t want them trying to hold on to things that didn’t matter. No, scratch that. I didn’t want them trying to hold on to things that were not holding me back.  

It got to my chest, and I started to feel the real void. I didn’t have a broken heart anymore, because I had no heartbeat. I realized my heart could only break before because I was alive. To be alive is to feel. And you can feel way too many things. I didn’t need that either. So I let go. And it was a relief. 

When my mouth disappeared I was happy. I didn’t need to say anything. I had said almost everything I needed to say, and the things that I never managed to express didn’t seem as important anymore. I knew I wasn’t able to express what I really meant anyway. Words were always too limited. I could never make anyone understand what went inside of me. I could never really make them feel what I meant. Three words lose its meaning the moment they vanish into the air. If they didn’t understand me in my quiet silence, if they didn’t understand my loud actions, then I had definitely failed. No, I didn’t need this mouth anymore. I was only going to miss those tiny moments when my mouth wasn’t my own. 

I never understood my nose. It was one of the weirdest part of my human suit. I liked air, but now it didn’t look like I was getting any. I was going to miss some smells, probably. I was going to miss how the smell of clothes that weren’t my own made me feel like home. But then again, I never understood that I couldn’t make a home out of another human suit. 

My eyes. Damn, this was going to be hard. I didn’t know how to forget the things I saw. As my sight left me, and I couldn’t even see the darkness anymore, I could still remember another pair of eyes. I could still remember the blue of the sky, I always hated it. I could remember smiles, so many different kind of smiles, coming from the same mouth. I regretted all those times I didn’t look because I was too scared of being caught. I did that a lot. I knew then that it was stupid. I should have always looked at pretty things, no shame on enjoying the perfection of creation. 

Then it finally got to my brain. My mind. There was a time when I confused my existence with thought. It was hard to realize I was not inside of my head. As I still felt trapped there. Did this mean I was going to be free at last? Was I going to return to my source? I felt light all of the sudden. And I realized that what kept me held to the ground were never my feet, but my limited mind.  I didn’t want these sick thoughts anymore. I didn’t want all the voices, all the fights, all the self-doubt, the judgment. I didn’t want the constant screaming of those 3 voices in the back of my rooms, they never said anything. They just screamed. I think they were always begging for something. And I never understood what it was, so I never pleased them, and they kept screaming. No, I didn’t want any of this anymore. I let go of this very last piece of me. My last thought was very simple: this was never all of me.  

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I took a first breath. I felt like I had been holding it in for years. In fact, I felt like I had never had air in my lungs before. 

I was still here? 

I was still on my bed. 

I was still inside of my human suit. 

I had all of my senses. 

I was attached to the ground. Gravity was still working. 

My heart was beating. 

Correction: my broken heart was still beating. 

I had woken up, again. 

It was too much…  

I could breathe… 

But it hurt, again.