11:59

It’s 11:59pm and I’m sitting on the kerb outside my house. The tears won’t stop. Neither will the snot. But that’s okay because there’s also grass where I’m sitting. The only light is the streetlight, tossing its glow upon the gritty pavement. And the seemingly insurmountable weight of life is pressing down on me, hard.

You know that point in life, where you just question, why? That was that point for me. Not even eighteen yet, and already facing a mid-life crisis.

I’d been swimming around in my head, my thoughts a dark, vast pool. Nautical, astronomical, cosmic, and oh so crowded. Before this? Still a pool, but clearer. This was the point. My final high school year – it should have been the greatest. But instead, we were sitting, cloistered in our own homes, eyes glued to the screen, head filling with the static noise of stress, crackling, popping, constant. The waves of tiredness, crashing down over your head. The uncertainty of the future, a dime waiting to drop. Seeing my friends, a distant past, and a vague hope.

Could you call this a near-death experience? Possibly. The contemplation was there. It’s scary to write about, to bare your soul. But maybe it’s easier this way – when the words flow onto the page. Emotions and thoughts immortalised, memorialised.

My view on life shifted in that instant. I’d been walking around the blocks in the darkness of the night. I questioned why, the reason for our births, countless small flashes like the births of a million stars. Fleeting, and gone in an instant. I’d questioned why we’d been created, if not to suffer long and painful lives. Would it have been better not to be born at all? Existential, I know. And not that helpful when you’re in the middle of an exam block and have the tenth assignment due the next day.

But I’m glad that I stayed. I’m glad that the thoughts that pressed around me, threatening to overpower, did not. I admit, the perceived reason for my pain was also the reason that also got me through. God. I questioned Him, but I got no answer, like Job. Yet He preserved me.

My sister came and sat beside me. Together we looked up. The stars winked in the distance. While the fears grew loud, a steely small peace spoke into my heart. Life was hard before this. But life was still hard after.

I like to think of this moment, as it is – a moment, in my story. I am still coming of age, and always will be. It is not often that we take a moment, come up for a breath from swimming in the swirling currents, from trying to make our way forward in the torrents.

To take a moment to wonder. At how beautiful and complex our brains are. How vast, expansive, the universe. How microscopic the little lives of the bugs, and our body's cells.

How fascinating that our lives are so long, large, expansive, crossing so many paths and into other stories, characters that weave in and out of other stories, yet coalescing, being stitched together to create a grand, magnificent story. Why is it that we like great literature, the classics? Perhaps it is because they speak to our innate desire to be part of a story, so grand that it outlives our very lives.

To step outside ourselves and our lives, I feel, is when we truly begin to live. To look beyond the minutiae of this life and to ask the big questions. To challenge yourself. To not be complacent.

That is the crux of the story. My story. Our stories.