I Am the 28th Day of June

My first memory is pain. Nothing major, just shampoo stinging my eyes as my mother washes my hair in a small, cramped shower where I wail in agony. Piecing things together, I learned I was between two and three years old at the time. I still can't open my eyes underwater.

I've tried recalling anything beyond that first memory, but nothing swims to the surface. When I tried my hardest to think backwards as a child, the best I could grasp was a sense of darkness and a loud "clap" like a jet buzzing a tower. Just imagining the sound would startle my young meditating mind awake, until I had to go play or otherwise occupy myself to shake the sense of "NO - GO BACK".

Growing up, I associated that darkness with death, which I thought would take me back to the void I so feared. Yet in all accounts I've read, death was never described as a darkness but as a light - the calm return to an existence free of the pain that first linked me to this world.

After years of consideration, I determined the darkness I feared wasn't the natural cycle of death, but the unnatural reversion to a state before life. Gears don't like turning backwards - they often grind, whine, or break when forced in the wrong direction. Trying to push back the veil and undo existence leaves a similar impression on the soul, I would guess.

If you imagined each day of the calendar as a single existence, then say I'm currently the 28th day of June. My day can't be restarted, nor can I go back to the 27th of June - that person has already lived their day. And although I can't recall every single minute of my life here on Earth, the collective impact of my days has made me who I am. Maybe the universe won't recall all the specific events of my life after I'm gone either. But I believe my experiences will fill that void, shaping it into more than it was before.

However bleak they may get, my days can never be dark - because they are what fills the darkness. The 28th day of June cannot be stopped, it can only run its course.

Good luck, June 29th.

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