The Sensation of Space

Darkness. There is an immense amount of darkness. Like a newborn baby opening its eyes to first light, I open my eyes to a glittering blanket covering, encircling me and it pulls away from me sending my body into the emptiness. Far away enough that I can no longer feel its proximity. My body is naked, vulnerable both frightening and invigorating. But the glittering remains, and I am floating. How strange it is to continue afloat with nothing neither holding on to your body nor surrounding your frame. Am I floating up or down, horizontally or diagonally? I try to grasp on to the sensation trying to determine which direction I am going and it scares me when I cannot answer myself. Then, as the realization that directions do not exist here in space washes over me, it leaves behind it a fear of the unknown lingering within my heart. Am I moving, or is everything around me moving? I feel the answers like a weight on the tip of my tongue but they refuse to move forward out of my mouth. In an effort to keep my mind from spinning like my body out of control, I push my questions to back of my head and leave it empty. Then I float. I listen to the silence and I allow my naked body to really feel the pull of nothing. It truly is beautiful, this feeling, this sight, this sensation of space. The lights continue to glitter igniting the nostalgia of Christmas and birthdays. My heart becomes aglow like the lights around me and I’m no longer floating instead I am soaring through my childhood, my high school dances, my wedding night. The darkness surrounds the light yet I push it away and continue to soar through the nothing. This must be what it feels like to fly. The sensation is so vast, so grand that I forget to close my mouth. I take a breath. Then, in an instant the soaring is gone, flushed away as my lungs grab onto nothing and panic overthrows me. The glittering becomes sharper like warning signs and the glowing in my heart is replaced with a feeling of terror. My body begins to convulse and as I look onto my flailing arms and my rising chest, I see my skin turn blue. The nothingness becomes cold as it hugs my frail frame. Slowly the alarm within my head begins fall into emptiness as brain cells die off. One by one, moment by moment, thought by thought. A star implodes, dying in the distance, bursting a hole in my once comforting blanket. And with my last brain cell, the feeling of beauty returns as I remember my first kiss lit by new year fireworks. Then it is gone, and a ringing takes over my ears, and my body is still and the heart monitor flat lines and the doctor lays down his shock paddles… and my room in the comatose wing is finally empty...The sensation of space returns.