My life had not been one worth living. On the contrary, it had been quite disappointing.
Diagnosed at birth as immunodeficient, it had been made abundantly clear to my parents that I would need to be sheltered from the outside world if I were to have any chance at some kind of long-term survival. A warning which unfortunately could not have proved more apt, as only a few short months later, a rare genetic disease had reared its ugly head, rendering every single bone of my infant body brittle and effectively made a permanent cripple of the child I still was at the ripe old age of three months old.
Clearly, starting on the right foot was not something my genes believed in...
To their credit, however, my parents had shown themselves exceptionally generous with me, even going against medical advice and deciding on not abandoning me for the failure I was, opting instead to invest themselves fully in my upbringing and taking on the task of ensuring I had as comfortable a lifestyle as my dismal circumstances in life allowed. They even went as far as petitioning and pestering the hospital where I resided to provide me a state of the art computer and an eye-tracking system through which I could rudimentarily communicate with the outside world from the safety of my sealed contamination room.
I had been lucky that the said computer system had come with an Internet connection as it had also granted me access to a plethora of books, movies, television shows as well as some online courses with which I could occupy my time with as I grew of age to do so.
Despite all the limitations of my situation and regardless of the fact that I did not have a single positive memory of ever standing on my own feet, let alone setting foot outside the hospital or even having a single friend, my parents had poured their time and energy into ensuring I had a decent upbringing, pushing me to try and get the most out of the cards I had been dealt in life, urging me to always give it my all and teaching me to do my best at all times, no matter how unfair I often felt my existence to be.
I credited them fully with the fact that I was already, as an eighteen years old teenager, halfway through an online five-years degree in computer science, offered by the local university, though I had to admit, it was much easier for me to find the time to be studious and productive when I had none of the numerous distractions that often accompanied the ability to move or socialize.
Silver linings and all that...
Such an artificial, dark and oftentimes sarcastic sense of optimism had been quite necessary in keeping me going forward at numerous points of my short life, from the first time I had ever overheard when pretending to be asleep, my mother break out into sobs, cursing the fate she had been dealt and audibly questioning what she had ever done to deserve to be plagued by such a son, or even during that one week after my ninth birthday when my father had taken time off work and stayed with me, interacting and observing me with a vigor he had never shown before or since, which at the time had made me ecstatic, until I had realized years later that he had been, at that particular point in time, seriously contemplating signing off on my euthanization.
Such events had been the hallmarks of my late childhood and early teens, and while I had oftentimes cried myself to sleep, I had never blamed my parents for anything that had happened to me and done my best to shield them from my more torturous thoughts, always requesting of my nurses to clean off any proof of sadness and dried tears from my face before my parents were allowed into the room, in fear they could see even the slightest trace of my pain.
All things considered, it had come to a point where I had made my peace with the Universe and my place in it, fully determined, as I was, to leave a positive mark behind when my time finally came.
Which was why it was simultaneously so heartbreaking and infuriating for me when one of my blood vessel had suddenly and inexplicably exploded in the middle of the night, aggravating what would have been a simple and routine nosebleed for anyone else in the world, into an agonizing ordeal that had seen me slowly choke on my own blood, unable to struggle or do anything to prevent it, causing me to suffocate to death, alone as I drifted into darkness.
If I were to be honest with myself, I would admit being more disappointed than sad at the fact of finally dying. Death was not something I feared anymore, and while I did not actively yearn for it like I had done so often in my younger years or whenever I had spent time thinking on what kind of life awaited me, I could only feel emptiness at the thought.
Nowadays, I did not feel like I had much to lose when my suffering was to come to an end, and yet, I could not help but find the timing of my demise to be both insulting and cruel.
Had I known this pitiful excuse of a life I had just experienced would have been the extent of my existence from the moment of my birth, I would have preferred to have died on the spot, rather than put my parents through the almost two decades of suffering raising me had proved itself to be. A stillborn son would have been a devastating blow to their lives and marriage, but it paled in comparison to what they were sure to feel now, at the loss of their only child and the sequelae it would leave behind. Dying alone in my sleep was a terrible way for me to repay them for all the sacrifices they had forced upon themselves for my sake.
No matter what I told myself, I could never ignore the pang of guilt plaguing my heart at the thought.
In the end, my existence had truly been meaningless and only pain had ever come from my continued survival into the world. I was confident my family would have been much happier had I never been born.
And yet, despite all that, a part of me I loathed couldn't help but feel slightly relieved for my suffering to have come to an end, relieving me of the responsibility of moving forward and pretending I was happy for the sake of others.
In death, at least, there would be peace and I would be free of my worthless existence and the unnecessary worries that had followed every single moment of my wasted days.
I could finally be true to my feelings.
Death, however, was not like anything I had expected it to be, now that I was taking the time to think about it.
I could feel neither hell nor heaven close by, no demon had come to harvest my soul, nor had any angel appeared to judge me or the way I had acted in life. In fact, not even aliens were anywhere to be seen.
There was nothing. Absolutely nothing.
I was floating, alone, in the cold dark void, unable to perceive a thing, blind, deaf, slowly being crushed by the emptiness of the world and suffocating under the weight of my own existence, as I lay motionless, paralyzed in the nether.
It was not a pleasant experience, and as time passed, I found myself slowly delving into panic; It would truly be an ironic and extremely cruel joke for me if in the end, this was all the afterlife had to offer, essentially condemning me to the same fate I had hoped to escape through my death for all of eternity, especially when taking my rotten luck and the unfortunate way my life had gone so far into account.
I would not be terribly shocked to learn this was all I would ever amount to, a prisoner of my own mind to the bitter end of times and it was with growing dread that I was starting to bitterly accept my fate.