Menu

Stars - Chapter 1

Sometimes I lie awake at night and pretend that I can see the stars on my ceiling and I know all their names. If there's one thing I can count on, one thing that keeps me going it's the stars. Only that's not always true.

If you look hard enough, you can find an exception to every rule. And if you're not careful the exception will find you. I didn't go looking but it found me all right.

I know it was an ancient prophesy coming into play now, but then I hadn't the slightest idea.

I was probably about seven when my fascination with stars began. Every night before bed I would sit outside and watch the stars in the sky. They filled me with a sense of peace. I felt comfortable with them, like I belonged. So at the time I was seven and maybe it wasn't quite that philosophical, but still… you get my point.

Over the next few years I learned as much as I could about the sky, the stars, the moon, and the planets. I wanted to know what every little twinkle in the night sky was. Looking back on it now it was probably more of an obsession than just a fascination. I simply could not saturate enough information to satisfy me. When I was ten, and my thirst for knowledge was at its worst because I felt I was close to discovering something important, my world shattered.

During that year my mother died. With her seemed to die all the information I had learned as well as my drive and ambition. It all faded away into nothingness, because without her it didn't matter anymore. I couldn't understand why this had happened to me.

I went through the motions of my life for the next three years. I still went out and looked at the stars every night, taking what solace I could from them. When I looked at them I was no longer filled with a sense of awe, but with a sense of loss instead. I wanted to know why my mother had been taken from me. She had been so supportive and wonderful and she was gone. She was my world and she was gone. I ended up living with one of the ladies next door. She was willing to take me in and had been my mother's best friend.

On the night of my thirteenth birthday I was sitting on the roof, staring up at the stars in the sky wondering where my love for them had gone. I was wrestling with my inner emotions trying desperately to allow the stars to become a part of me again when the whole sky blackened. Every star, every planet, every twinkle of light in the sky disappeared.

The streetlights cast an eerie glow without the natural light of the moon and stars shining down. The whole town seemed to be frozen. No sounds could be heard, no movement seen. I was sitting on the roof of a house and felt as though I were the only person alive. I was consumed by loneliness at that moment and silently tears began streaming down my cheeks. It was not like a flash of darkness, the sky stayed dark until the sun slowly began its climb through the sky. I sat on the roof all night, staring into the darkened sky wondering where the stars had gone.

At a time when I needed them, when I was beginning to regain some sense of my life the stars simply blinked out of existence for a night. I was angry at everything I could think of to be angry at.

After the sun came up I climbed off the roof and went into the house. I knew something big had happened and wondered briefly if the stars would shine that night. Later I would try to learn the answers, all I did that day was grieve. Not only for the loss of the stars that night but also for the loss of my mother. She was so interconnected with my love for the stars that sometimes it seemed like one and the same thing. The stars disappearance seemed like a final blow, a final shove from reality for me to accept that my mother was dead. That day I finally came to the realization that my mother was really gone.

 

Menu