Introduction to a Story

The best times of my life were the ones where I didn’t have to worry about having an existential crisis every night. This was when I was young, a child. Starting with my first memories until the time when we moved out of our house and into the newer one. There was nothing wrong with the new house, it was very aesthetically pleasing and perfect for my family. The problem was with me. I don’t handle change very well. I should have known from the start, but when I was younger I wasn’t smart enough to realize what I felt. Even when the new house came, I still didn’t know what exactly I felt, but it was then that I started to realize that I didn’t handle change very well. This is when the existential crisis began to occur. I’ve been left pondering many nights, so much so that I only get four or five hours of sleep, as opposed to the solid eight I prefer.
       
I consider this a character flaw of mine, and though I suspect I’m not the only one who stays up wondering why my choices have left me at the exact time and place that I am currently at, I struggle very much alone. I attribute how I live my life to this character flaw. I feel as if I am always two steps away from reality, looking on it and questioning its dynamics, examining what others don’t see, as opposed to everyone else, who lives in the moment with no regard for the purpose of which they are living. People look up to the stars and are easily amused by the numerous bright lights, while all I can see is how rare life is. I treasure the thought of being alive and conscious, being able to understand what I do, and have free will over it, yet it is a thought that brings great sorrow for me. I think of the world in which I live. I try to wrap my mind around everything that makes up the world in which we live, how it has changed, and how I often long for things that have come and gone and will never return.

This is why I often remember my childhood and yearn for anything to take me back. It was the time I enjoyed the most, as I am sure it is the time that the vast majority of my world has enjoyed the most. And though I have my physical treasures and hoards of memories, nothing can truly replace the feeling of existing in that time I so cherished. As the gap between where I exist and where I long to exist grows, I find the experiences and events in between grow in their capability to produce sorrow in such great magnitude. As of recent, I have found myself to experience physical pain caused by this sorrow of the mind. It cripples me, renders me unable to move or act normally. I must take even more steps to distance myself from reality, and retreat into my mind, in order to focus on the time which contains the vast majority of the joy and happiness I have collected and stored away over my life.

This period of joy is like a small candle in a perfectly dark room. It is the only thing that emits light. As my life goes on the room continues to grow. I can feel it expand, yet it is not the light which expands, but the darkness. My small candle is always emitting light, and it shines in the darkness, but there is so much darkness, the room is so big, that my small candle cannot possibly shine its light on every inch of darkness. It is a darkness too great for this candle, and constantly growing. The candle will never blow out, but it will also never illuminate all of my darkness. I can always see it from where I am, and even go back to it, but I can’t stay there, and it can’t come with me. It brings me great joy to view, and I always relish the light it shines, but it deeply sorrows me that it is fixed there, never to grow, never to shine light on all of my darkness which my life has accrued.

This is my tale. From the beginning to the end, it has been an adventure which few will truly experience and even fewer fully comprehend, as even I fail to comprehend everything which has happened. All I know is that it did happen, I did experience it, I did live. And I regret nothing.