Wishes

 

My high school teacher used to say that there two ways of being immortal, you never die or you’re never forgotten. In hindsight, maybe I should have been a little more specific when I made my wish. A deal with the devil would have gone further into the details since the basic cost for services is your soul, but it’s my mistake for trusting the archaic definitions of a millennia old genie.

Maybe a part of me knew this would happen and decided not to question it. Maybe I thought immortality was the only way of making the pain stop. The only way of not facing my heartbreak. The way to die inside and become numb to all that happens in life. The stop to what makes us human. I wanted to stop everything because I just got tired. I got tired mentally, emotionally. I just gave up. Maybe being alone is the way to go in life. You get used to being secluded, but it gets hard when you know your close to death. The entire game changes when you never shake hands with the grim reaper. It is a change of pace from the status quo. Day in and day out being there for other people, putting their needs above yours because you want to ignore your own personal problems. The fuck up that is your life. The inside scream that never stops because you’re just too scared. Every day you want to let it out. To release the pain, to cry.

But you can’t. The tears won’t come out. You haven’t cried in years. You’ve always been okay. Just okay. You don’t want to bother anyone else with your problems. There’s no point in making anyone else around you sad. I just wanted to make them better as a way of making myself feel better. Live and learn.

The romantic relationships used to hit harder. When you’re younger the emotional pain mixes pretty well with the physical pain. You feel rejected and you blame the other person for hurting you. As you grow older, the physical pain disappears or you just ignore well enough that it doesn’t really bother you anymore. That’s when the sleepless nights begin, the funny way the brain tells you it remembers everything. You tire yourself endlessly in the hopes that slumber land envelopes you the moment the head makes contact with the pillow. The shutdown button, the kill switch for that inside voice. Years pass and you understand how some people are just not that connected to each other. Some would say ‘right person at the wrong time’. But wouldn’t the right person be there at any time?  At last you get to move on without any fuss, no pain or damage. Still stings a little. Another couple of years go by, you look around and that’s when you start to second guess yourself. Everyone around has someone, but you don’t. Maybe you’re the problem or maybe in life there is no ‘the one', the person that we idealise in our head. Maybe we just walk on this floating rock alone and what really completes us is a part of everyone we meet along the way, the companions we choose to share a part of ourselves.

Some people leave taking a piece of us or they leave a part of them with us. Maybe that's why we change, because we mix and match pieces. It's gonna hurt. We might cry, but at the end of the day the hope will still burn in our hearts no matter the pain we endure. That's what makes us human. There is no right way of doing things, no magic formula. We just wing it until we get close to a balance where we don't fall into the abyss.

I became too tired for the whole circus act so I wished to be immortal. But no matter how hard I tried, hope always tempted by with those tantalising words, 'what’s the worse that could happen?’, ‘why not give it a try?’ or ‘they are the one!’. I fall for that trick every darn time and like clockwork my heart, if I still have one, breaks into pieces. I tried to move on with my life, but in the end I realized the truth about my wish.

I died, because everyone that knew isn’t around anymore to remember me, but they became immortal as I never forgot them.

 

For my second wish I wanted to be powerful. To have the power to do anything I set my mind to. I promised myself that I would never allow it to corrupt me. I’ve seen throughout my life people that had been changed by it, turned wicked by it, grew horns over night.

I rose up from my situation fairly quickly, I was ahead of my time. I had money, fame and success. To fulfil my promise I started to help my friend, my loved ones to accomplish their hopes and dreams. Out of sense of love I wanted to do everything in my power to protect them and see them happy. But I was a fool. I wish to protect them so much I ended up controlling them. I didn’t allow them to make their own mistakes in life, to grow, to be themselves.

I’ve changed people. I corrupted people into becoming an empty shell, a shadow of their former selves. I did too much and people became dependent on me. Instead of power corrupting me, I became the power, the devil that would take people’s souls. I began to hate myself, to hate what I had become. I manipulated the people in my life. They saw me as the most beautiful angel, the answer to their prayers. In their empty soulless eyes I was god. But I knew the truth. I was a false god, a demon dressed in fancy clothing.  I was a monster.

I just stopped. I tried to make excuses for why couldn’t help them anymore, assist them with anything. I was rewarded with hate, resentment. When you end up doing nothing, people lose hope. When I stopped, I did it for their own good. I didn’t want to hurt them anymore, I didn’t want to destroy them anymore. Now they saw me as a monster, a demon of betrayal, selfish. The tables had turned. I was selfish when I tried to take their pain away because I was not strong enough to comfort them, I couldn’t handle their suffering.

While feeling weak I wished for power and ended up destroying everything around me.

 

For my third and final wish, I wanted all the knowledge in the world.