“You look so young”

I have listened to people complain ad nauseum about how unfair death is and how they wish they could live forever as well any number of conspiracy theories about how there is a way to live forever, but “they” are trying to keep it secret, while “they” enjoy the benefits eternal life.

Balderdash. I have lived for three millennia at this point and let me tell you, immortality is not all it’s cracked up to be.

Consider this: The first time around, I had a fairly "normal" existence. I was born – although I really don’t remember that so maybe I just appeared one day but I think things would have gone differently had that been the case, I don’t know. There’s no one around to ask. Anyway, I was born, I grew up, I had parents – again, I am assuming at this point because my memory isn’t as good as it once was, and I could only start writing things down on paper about 1500 years after I was born. So anyway, I grew up, I had a partner, we had children, they grew up, my partner died, my children and their partners died, my children’s children died…but somehow, I didn’t. Of course, I figured out that something was up long before I had to leave the place I had called home for those early years. I didn’t need a mirror (thank goodness since they were invented some 2800 years after I was born). I had the eyes of my family, my friends, my neighbors. The little insidious comments about how I never changed, I always looked the same, I looked better than my children, my grandchildren. I had no answers. I’d just hunch a shoulder and say, “Thank you?” People telling you how young you look gets old very quickly. It’s never a compliment. Indeed, it became the death knell to each iteration of my life.

And I have to say, yes, it is a miserable thing to bury everyone you love and have to find the wherewithal to continue living. And watching generation after generation find new reasons to hate (or the same old reasons with new packaging) and more technologically advanced ways to kill, is not heartening. Watching economic and political systems, nations and religions, rise and fall? Not great entertainment. Seeing knowledge expand exponentially only to contract (remember the Dark Ages?): not fun.

But it is absolutely terrifying to have to leave everything that you have known, everything that is familiar and treasured, to forge a new life elsewhere where you know no one and, most importantly, where no one knows you, because those that do know you - indeed even those who have loved you - become fearful of you. You are an aberration of everything they know should be. And as far as everyone knows, the circle of life is just that: a circle. Life should not be a continuous, unending line. No one should look 25 for 100 years, never mind 3000. Granted, the witch hunts and all their manifestations could not kill me even when they tried. But they did send me off and running from lives I loved too many times to count.

I wouldn’t wish immortality on my worst enemy.