I Used To Be

I used to be the Earth. I was there. People knew I was there. Sometimes they would wonder what I was up to, so they would turn around and look for themselves, or ask their neighbors. They were satisfied with the answer, they had no choice, what could they do to change me? I was solid, I was firm. I was unchanged by petty things or by daily struggles. I was safe; I was comforting. I was something they didn’t understand, but I was something that they lived with, adjusted to, but something they never really worried about.

I used to be the Sun. I shined vibrantly and radiantly and sought to shine in every dark corner of the world. I sought to bring light into everything’s life, into everything’s world. Sometimes though, I shined too brightly, and some were afraid to step into the light I gave them. Some of them ran, some of them simply refused to step out from behind the shadows. Sometimes, I shone where I was not wanted, where there was no desire for light or heat or comfort. Sometimes people wanted nothing more than to put me out. Sometimes I shined light on things that were better kept in the dark. Sometimes I changed people’s lives forever.

I used to be the Earth; I used to be the Sun. Now, I don’t know what I am. I am not steady; I am not firm. My life shifts randomly and irrationally, sometimes slowly over time, sometimes violently within the course of a few minutes or hours. Sometimes those changes are brought on by some great event that occurs before me or that I hear about from my friends or from television. Sometimes those changes happen in a few minutes while I am sitting alone in between classes. I used to believe that change was just a process that had to occur between one stage of your life and another, but more and more my life is being defined by the changes, not by the steady lengths in between.

Things are speeding up, steady times which used to last for years now last for months, sometimes only for weeks. And I am lost, turning like a ship on the sea, without a compass, and without even the knowledge of how to use the compass. I am strong enough to swim wherever I need to go, but I can’t truly convince myself that something worth the swimming lies in any one direction. So I sit here in my little boat, and wonder about the ocean, and wonder about the sky, and wonder about the all the stars in the sky and how they got up there in the first place, when I am stuck so solidly down here. I wonder what I will become, when what I am now becomes what I used to be.

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