Four Page Metaphor

     I've often wondered, late at night, what I was doing. Why stay up so late to see a sunrise that my not come? Why stay at all?
      It is then I come to realize, again and again, that maybe it isn't all about me. It isn't all about my family, the people I've seen, or humanity itself.
      "What is life?" I question, and of course there is no answer. Some questions have no answers, and like humanity has been apt to do, I learn to answer my questions.
      Is it in service of gods or deities whose faces we have never seen? Is it in service of those we love, those we see in our daily lives? How important is it for one to be there?
      My answer is "Not."
      By being scientific about things, we have dehumanized them. The magic of seeing colors seemingly glow in the sky is dismembered into fragmented light through tiny molecules of atoms, protons, the tiniest particles that make up all things. Out of millions, billions, trillions of creatures we make up only a small part, and the universe cares not one way or another what happens to us. We are creatures of nutrients and energy, and so to nutrients and energy we return.  And with this answer, I was unsatisfied. There had to be more, I decided, and truth or not, I had to find it. And so my question remained.
      "How important," I asked, "am I as an individual?" My mind screams "Not," once again. But something gives me pause. Perhaps it is not the question I am looking to answer. In fact, I begin to be convinced that it isn't. Instead, I slowly, tentatively ask a different one.
      "What makes me important?"
      My mind quiets, and begins to show me what I am. Reaching up to hands much larger than mine, the echoes of cars and murmurings of the bystanders long gone. Images, faces, feelings and experiences that words could not ever hope to describe.  The images begin to deepen.
      "What is life?" I ask again.
      A child appears, face contorted in agony, mouth open and eyes clenched shut against the waves of pain from an injury invisible. A hand from the base of my vision, palm up, fingers reaching, offering an invisible something to it that seems to quiet the screams to quiet whimpers. The small hand reaches, and shakily takes the fingers into its own.
      A pull, and the child begins to grow. But with it, a whole new world begins to form. Screams melt into croons, then laughter. The hand feels warm, though the child's eyes remain cold; hardened in pain. It opens its mouth once more, but there is no sound.
      At least, not from its throat.
      Images begin again. "Life," it says, "is good." And all that pain I see begins to die. The stony look softens into a smile; its eyes begin to warm as if by a soothing fire.
      It was then that I understood.
      The eternities spent crying, screaming, dying, yet making not a sound. Nearly a decade spent silently destroying myself, tearing down the walls and support, freeing from willing obligation the people who consented. The years I spent caring for people who cared nothing for me. The hours upon hours I had spent brooding, avoiding, and raging against so many people. They were not relevant, but were not irrelevant either.
      They were barriers. Barriers I had to learn to grow around.
      The months I had spent typing, making my voice heard in the minds of hundreds, thousands. All those years I had spent creating worlds, drawing dreams, and making them real were what I had done with what I had been given.
      The child whose hand I held when no one else would. Its screams repelling the weak of mind but I had reached despite the turmoil.
      "Despite the hate," it said quietly, "you still love."
      The hours, days, weeks talking, bantering, entertaining the ones I cared about, the ones who were important to me. The one I had chosen, and the months of trepidation, fear, remorse, regret. The love I had felt when he took me into his arms and listened to all I said without a lie to tell in return. Every misstep, a trial. Every mistake, a lesson.
      The warmth of another's heartbeat, every embrace a question, and every return an affirmative answer.
      For every time I saw someone whom had long been absent, taking their hands into mine, knowing they were alive, knowing that I knew them and they knew me. That I mattered to someone.
      And they mattered to me.
      The feel of thin, dry hands still warm with life and love. The smiles, laughter, words unaware of the tempestuous mind that received them. The innate knowledge that I may never see them again.
      Another hand appears from my vision, and the child takes it, smiling.
      "You live," it said, "because you love."
      The love of a sister whom I had never seen, never touched, and never held. The sister I never had, who lives halfway around the world so far from my grasp, yet sees who I am and accepts. The people from oceans away who have grown to become my friends, my family. The love of culture, the expanses I had traveled through my own life, the places I have seen.
      "And the strife," the child says, squeezing my hand in preemptive comfort.
      Streets roamed by beggars, the deformed, the elderly with no family to care for them. The creatures of the earth who starve, ail, suffer, and die. The children with deformity that pushes away the ones who were meant to care the most. An infant, abandoned for its blindness when lying next to him was a little girl paralyzed from the neck down who had come late in life.
       Every time I had seen someone pushed down, beaten, abused. Every time I had, myself, been abused with such words that were meant to help, to comfort. Lies that cut like blades into my skin, into my mind.
      Every time I had said "enough," and helped them up.
      "You love because they love." It whispers, taking my hands close to its chest as if forcing me to feel, but I felt nothing.
      Every "Thank you", every smile, every tearful gaze of relief. Every "Please" and every "help me" I had come to answer.
      The trust they had placed in me, to have me advise, assist, and overhear. The secrets, it reminded me, I was never to share, and  I never would. The trust he had placed in me to tell me what and why.
      The trust and love of parents who would die themselves rather than have me slain. The love of a brother who had listened.
      "What is life," I asked again, "if I do not matter?"
      Tears slid down the child's face, though the smile did not disappear.
      "You do matter." It said.
      "Every time you said hello or I love you, every time you helped someone or gave a kind word, every time you were silent as you listened to someone, and every time you gave them advice you truly believed would help. That is why you matter. They love you. You love them."
      "But," it conceded, "you do not love yourself."
      "Why?" I asked.
      "Because you are afraid."
      By the hand I was taken to a world all my own. No another soul to be seen but the child, now grown, with my hand clasped in its thin, strong digits. A soft wind blew, ruffling the grass in seemingly marine waves. Leaves twirled freely in the currents, dancing around each other and disappearing into the trees in the distance.
      "You are afraid to love yourself because you would begin to build upon innocence…" it gazed into my eyes, "…you do not dare corrupt."
      Pride, something humanity had placed in itself, the thing that I had come to despise. The thing I had learned to avoid. The cause of war, the cause of dispute: pride in oneself.
      Suddenly a sharp, sweet smell cut through, and I was once again in the field, laying on a flat stone facing the sky; wide, blue, and cloudless.
      "You are afraid to love yourself, so you love other people hoping that one day they can teach you."
      The warmth in my arms, the soft feel of hair, the sweet, familiar smell that I had grown fond of. Memories, and suddenly I was calm. All was right.
      "You love others so much because you cannot love yourself." The child said, "despite the hate and injustice, you fight for them because you love them, hoping that they will love you."
      "And if they do not?"
      A flit, and suddenly the child was on his back, pinned by a massive, ugly creature. With the small neck in its jaws, it growled. The sky darkened, the breeze became turbulent. The child turned its head to me, still smiling, confident, safe.
      "You die. Again and again."
      The teeth came down on the child's neck and I could only stand and watch as the small body was torn apart. The beast rose, turned, and came for me.
      "Love is life," the voice said, "If you cannot love yourself, you cannot live."
       Teeth sank into my neck, my hands pried at the murderous jaws, slick with blood and fluid. All the while I was shaken to the core by growls, deep and loud, reverberating.
      "Remember," I heard, "the one who rewarded you."
      The sweet smell came again, and the beast disappeared as if in a dream. My hands were again entwined with the child's, whose face was gazing knowingly.
      "You know this." It whispered.
      "How?"
      "You know how."
      Indeed I did. I knew why. I had spent all my love on other people and had so little left for myself. What I the roles were reversed? What if I loved myself so much that I could not love others?
      What if I couldn't balance out what I needed and what I wanted?
      "Life," the child said, "is love."
      "How you choose to express that love is up to you."