L'Étranger

"Hello," I whisper quietly to the solitary star in the sky, knowing it is on the brink of its ultimate fate—crashing into oblivion and fading into the annals of forgotten light. There’s a somber beauty in the knowledge that stars, though they blaze so brilliantly, are often long dead by the time their light reaches us. As a child, my sleepless nights were haunted by the monsters under my bed, but I found solace in the vast expanse of the night sky above. Despite its darkness, its boundless and almost infinite nature was never frightening; it was my sanctuary. The sky, with its deep, inky blackness, was the only sight that granted me peace and a sense of freedom.

In those quiet, solitary moments, I found comfort in the thought that the earth and the heavens could, in an instant, swallow me whole. The idea of being absorbed into the cosmos, to shrink or crash into the ultimate nothingness like the stars I admired, brought me an odd sense of relief. I yearned for that release, to escape the weight of existence and dissolve into the fabric of the universe.

I was an estranged child, perpetually out of place, never fitting into any social fabric or beyond. I cherished the worlds my books offered, while I loathed the limitations imposed by human connections. Every interaction felt like suffocation, as if people were stealing the very air I needed to breathe. I longed for solitude, to experience life at my own pace, immersed in the rich landscapes of my imagination.

In my mind, I saw wondrous things; I traveled to distant lands and met countless souls on the endless journeys I took within the confines of my thoughts. I experienced a vast spectrum of emotions, yet there was no outlet to share them. I knelt in silent pain, waiting for the waves of anguish to pass, accepting it as the natural order of the human experience. It felt as though this silent suffering was the essence of existence, an unspoken truth of what it means to be human.

Every human experience I encountered, I absorbed deeply within myself. I was never fully present in the external world; instead, I remained acutely aware of everything around me, yet inexplicably disconnected, as if I were always meant to be somewhere else. It was a haunting feeling, this sense of perpetual dislocation, like a ghost wandering through a life that was never truly mine.

When I attempted to speak, it felt as though I were cursed to use a forgotten language, a tongue only I could understand. My words would fall into the abyss, unheard and unacknowledged, and the void between me and the world would grow ever larger. It was a relentless, unchanging expanse that widened with each passing year.

We developed social skills, of course, honing our ability to read the room, to blend in, to mimic the behaviors and cues that made us seem part of the collective. But it was all a facade, a carefully constructed illusion. Deep inside, the chasm remained, an unbridgeable gap that no amount of social adeptness could ever truly close. It was a constant, gnawing reminder that despite all efforts to fit in, I was irrevocably, profoundly alone.

I found solace in the words of Albert Camus: "I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world." This gentle indifference was not a harsh rejection, but a quiet acceptance of my place within the vast, uncaring universe. It was a reminder that in the grand tapestry of existence, my isolation was just a thread, blending into the boundless fabric of being.

But I lost the star, and it never faded. It was never there. It was all in my head, an elaborate stage set for a play that had no audience. Alone, I weep. I weep for the unknown and the familiar, for dreams that never materialized, for love that was so real it felt like a physical presence, and for the stark reality that nothing lasts forever. The star, my beacon of hope, left a void that words cannot fill, a void that echoes through the empty corridors of my soul.