When you are in pain, you feel it completely. You feel everything and anything. The pain is so deep and so complete that you feel like you might die. When you are in pain, you can’t imagine ever feeling worse. You feel every facet of pain, and then you say you never want to feel it again.

The day comes when you hear them crying in front of you, or through texts, or on the phone. You hear their breathless sobs, their intakes of breath, their choked words. In that moment you would do anything for them to not feel that pain. You would take it into yourself if you could, even though you vowed to never let another person make you hurt. You would drown in a pain foreign to your own, so much more daunting for its vast depths of unknown.

You feel powerless because you know that anything you do is just tape, glue or a pretty bow. You know that no matter how much you help, they still have a scar or a crack or a chip, just like you have from your moment of pain.

When you hear them hurt, you feel like you can handle any pain. If you’re at your breaking point or at your finest hours you know that you would let yourself chip, let yourself break, let yourself shatter, if only they didn’t have to.

If only I could shatter so they wouldn’t break.

Caring doesn’t make you stupid. It makes you human, loving, and affectionate. The fact that other people can be disrespectful and indifferent to it just shows how much of an amazing person you are, because you still care and make an effort and let yourself be hurt even if other people don’t deserve it. It’s good to feel something, and even if people don’t appreciate it, one day you will find someone who does. When you do you will realize that caring didn’t make you stupid or weak, it made you strong because even after you were hurt you still cared, you still felt, you still tried. In truth, if we don’t feel something, life will be no more than a blur, and we can’t find ourselves in a blur.

My whole body was on fire. I could feel every centimeter of my skin ablaze.

I’ve known this would happen for years, now. Waiting and hoping for the day that I would change. They told me long ago that I would be powerful. So many people were interested in me, even before my powers showed themselves. Now the day has come, and I silently scream for the pain to go away. My screeched pleas incarcerated in my pain scattered mind.

The pain doesn’t die down. Minutes, hours, days, and years of pain pass in those seconds. Darkness closes around my vision slowly. There is a ringing in my ears, and my skin burns.

My body is on fire.

My mind is on fire.

All at once, the years of pain recede. My eyesight returns in a fraction of a blink. The ringing stops, and the silence is heavenly.

The fire dies down, and I’m no longer in flames.

The disorientation withers, and my consciousness registers what is before me.

In my line of sight I watch as the brown eyes I have seen in the mirror every day, disappear. I watch as the brown shapes and the gold flecks of the irises are swallowed by the blackness of the pupil. My eyesight zooms in, now, in a way. The blackness continues, erasing the white sea, and the meandering streams of red. When only darkness is left, my eyesight reaches in further, and I am able to see as orange, yellow, and red shapes reach upwards. They grow, and their incessant movement gives the colors the characteristics of flames.

A cold embrace brings my attention to my skin. Ever so slowly, I see as golden flecks rise to the surface of my skin, settling delicately atop it. More and more rise, covering every surface of flesh in a uniform layer of gold. As the light catches on the flecks, I see the warm tones of my skin or the golden sheen of my calling.

I am whole, now.

I am true.

The flames of my gaze and the glow of my skin will forever set me apart.

I am my true self now, but will I ever be me, again?

The future is daunting. We plan and hope and live, only to have it end in such mysterious ways. How is it possible that our thousands of years collecting knowledge have led to such an insurmountable question-mark? We spend most of our lives running away from death. Other people chase it down in misery or adventure. We run away from the elusive death, and into the arms of uncertainty. In some cases, our running seems so pointless. Death is unavoidable, after all.

In the end, is the precariousness of life favorable to the uncertainty surrounding death? Is the running, wise? Is our incessant pursuit of longevity admirable, or is it cowardly?

I, myself, have chosen to run. If death is inescapable and we can count on that experience, one way or another, sooner or later, why not run from it? I choose to try to escape. My choice is to run towards the experiences that life presents as I run away from death. I will sprint. I will persevere. I will fail.

When I die, I will do so with the certainty that I held on to life as best I could. In death, I’ll know that my life was cherished.

In death, I will know that I lived, or that I attempted to do so.

In life, death lives.