Still Life

I lived in fear all my life. Even in my happiest moments, I would freeze in anticipation of something horrible, something unimaginably dark, the emptiness absolute, and the hopelessness would poison those happy moments. Now was the time to face the abyss.

I looked up in the sky. The snow was falling on my face, and the night was pitch black. The peaks of the mountains were invisible, but I knew they were there, silently observing, like ancient gods, not allowing themselves to be disturbed, waiting for their turn. I tried to move my head to better look at this majestic landscape but could not. I closed my eyes. The snow was falling, but it did not bother me. I was one-on-one with my deepest fear, which was slowly entering every cell of my body, making it difficult to breathe and impossible to focus. The darkness was devouring me, and I had no idea how to overcome this terror.

Suddenly, a distant noise made me open my eyes. Through the hole in the clouds, I observed the moon shining bright on the mountain summits, and the serene grandeur of this scene calmed me down for a split second. Then, like a flash, a realization struck me – I was part of this moment, too; part of this brilliance, inseparable, now and forever. I was not alone in this fight against the ultimate horror. The moon, the snow, the peaks of the mountains – these ancient gods – were right there with me.

I let this thought sink in. I felt as though the time had finally stopped its absurd race, and I had found my place in the infinite, boundless, and mesmerizing mural of the cosmos. Nothing mattered. The terror was forgotten and the suffocating panic dissolved in this stillness. It was beautiful.

I lived in fear all my life: fear of nothingness, fear of non-existence. In this instant when the time stood still, everything finally became pure and clear. The fear was not real, the unimaginable darkness dissipated, and I was, at last, free. As I started to drift off into the infinity, I rejoiced. I was everything, and everything was me, with no boundaries, no beginning, and no end. I became one with the universe as I died.