But there was time before that, a time before this burning scream in your lungs. Back then, you did not have any lungs. It was when you first were conceived, before you had thoughts or touch. You were unknown to all, including yourself. You were next to nothing. You were the thickness of a piece of paper, but even then you were not singular. You were two things combined to form into one you. And it was peaceful for a while. After the initial crash, it was just coexistence. There was not much room to spread out, but you did not want room yet. You had no anxiousness or wander lust. Your cells, for the only time ever, satisfied in zygote.
It seemed that there was no time. Everything was dark, for you did not have the ability to see. Everything was silent, for you had no ability to hear. Nothing felt like anything. You do not remember this, and even now you cannot conceptualize this. It is impossible to understand yourself at your simplest form, two cells collided into one. It does not seem real but you have never seen your past happiness as quite real.
The two pieces of you lived together quite well. With no senses, there was no reason to dislike one another. The embrace, had you been able to feel it, the embrace was quite warm. It was comfort, and it was simplicity. No one wanted air or space, because what use is that to one without lungs? You existed solely inside of your two cells. It was all you knew and all you wanted. It was tranquil, and it seemed unending. It was all chemistry and biology, and no thought. Love in it’s simplest form. Two held together without knowing why and without needing to know why. They, ovum and sperm, melded cell membranes until they were one. Surrounded in each other's embrace.
Do you remember how you forgot? Of course not, but know this: things have a way of changing. They somehow always will, and they did.
After that it happened fast. Like multiplication. Like explosion. From 2 to 512 in one week. Each time one of your cells was divided into existence, it seemed to want to divide itself. They could not find that sameness, and thought that there were two halves of each of them. They saw too much energy, too much potential in themselves to stay so small. So they, you, grew bigger.
They did not remember the sameness that they once shared, the unity. Now they were all so focused on different tasks. Some wanted to breathe, other to kick. So curious and so fast in their expansion that they forgot somewhere along the way that they were all you. Call it mitosis, call it meiosis, or call it division. They made you from one into many competing to evolve the fastest, to grow the strongest. They formed some allegiances - muscles together and nerves, but they called themselves different names than you. They were not you but myocyte or langerhans or another tribe name.
The muscles made your heart beat as a war song. The you that was once a peaceful two was now a race to see who would be the first and the strongest. They divided and divided until there were 26 billion of them. Each one alive, and each an ancestor of those two that had loved each other so completely. They fought for air and blood and energy.
You don’t think of yourself as this, of course. You think of yourself as you, one entity, one being, one unit. You do not think of the electricity in your body, and the fervor every time that you heart beats. Sometimes you think of yourself as divided, as too much. You think you have too much energy, and not enough unity in your brain. You are frustrated that you fight with yourself or everyone else. Why, you wonder, can’t you know peace?
Because you were born fighting and growing. You were born a manifest destiny war of expansion between your cells, and it never stopped. Now you have 50 trillion, a number that you will never have a way of conceptualizing. You are made up of 50 trillion living organisms, all fighting for resources, dying and creating.
You were born like the universe. The universe started when all the gasses and energy, which were all condensed into one point, suddenly forgot their oneness and exploded, flying off into every different direction, inventing different directions. And this rapid expansion formed the elements that formed the gas that formed the stars.
So, on the nights when you can’t sleep, close your eyes tighter. Close them so tight until you can see those colors that travel in waves. Remember, then, that this is what the hubble telescope sees every night too. Remember that we do not see a problem in the great energy of the universe, we see infinite possibilities. Remember your conception. Remember that you are like the stars, and this energy that you have in abundance is not a curse. It is you remembering your creation. It is you