— When Everything Is Still, and Only Awareness Breathes —
I woke up.
At least, I thought I did.
But no light came in.
There was no ceiling, no walls, not even a breath of air.
No wind. No sound. No color.
There was nothing around me—
not even darkness itself.
I didn't see anything.
I merely became aware: I was no longer asleep.
Or perhaps, I had finally become aware of my own existence.
I tried to move.
My hands. My legs. My tongue…
Nothing responded. No sensation.
It was as if I no longer had a body—
or perhaps, the body no longer belonged to me.
Like a soul slipping out of an old set of clothes,
I floated in this void,
unsure whether I was lying down, standing up, or suspended in midair.
But I could hear.
I heard my heartbeat.
Like a metronome—
thump… thump… thump…
Steady, distant, echoing in my ears.
Then came the sound of blood,
flowing through unseen vessels,
like a river drifting through a vast, empty forest.
Soft. Rhythmic.
Reminding me: "You're still here."
I'm still here, I tried to say in my mind.
No echo.
So I started to count.
One, two, three, four...
Counting felt like an anchor,
a way to hold on to reality.
It gave me a sense of direction. A sense of time.
Something to stop me from unraveling into the nothingness.
I clung to the numbers like a lifeline.
Counted to a hundred, then back to one.
To five hundred, then reset again.
Time began to blur into clumps and loops.
My awareness pulsed in and out of focus—
expanding, contracting,
rippling outward like circles in water.
Then I realized:
I had forgotten my name.
The realization snapped me out of the counting.
My name—
that word that once held me in place in the world—
was now like a gear that had fallen loose,
unable to click into anything.
I started to remember.
Who was I?
Where did I come from?
What had happened before I woke up?
Did I have a family? Friends? A lover?
The answers came in fragments—
disjointed and chaotic.
I remembered speaking on a podium,
the sound of wind brushing through leaves,
a pair of hands gently holding my fingers.
I remembered the sterile scent of hospital disinfectant,
and a rainy night,
when a small kitten curled up beside my feet.
Every memory felt vivid—
but when placed side by side,
they seemed like pieces of a life that wasn't mine.
Whenever I tried to hold on to one detail,
another would rise from the depths of memory, replacing it.
It was like a story being told—
but I wasn't the one telling it.
My brain was trying to survive,
creating memories to fill the emptiness,
to cover the truth:
that I had already lost my true self.
Eventually, I began to accept it.
These false pasts.
These unverifiable fragments of identity.
And then, I understood:
I wasn't trapped in this space.
I was this space.
I was the echo in the silence,
the rhythm of the heartbeat,
the point where all imagined memories met—
a speck drifting between being and non-being.
I no longer needed a name.
No longer needed a body.
I belonged to neither the past nor the future.
I was this place.
Until—
At some unknown point,
a wave of exhaustion swept over me.
Not the fatigue of flesh,
but the heaviness of awareness itself.
Like smoke that has floated too long—
finally beginning to sink.
The heartbeat faded.
The sound of blood grew faint, unreachable.
I stopped thinking.
Stopped remembering.
Stopped speaking.
My consciousness slipped into a gentle hush,
like a river wrapped in the quiet of night—
until all things returned to stillness.
I fell asleep.
But this time,
not from fear.
Not from escape.
It was a complete return.
And I think—
maybe someday, I'll wake again.
Maybe not me,
but some other consciousness,
one who once struggled here,
in the blankness, just as I did.
And when that happens—
he too will count.
He too will forget.
And he too will become part of this place.
That is the meaning of my existence.