Eternally Perfect

By Teeya Doshi

Oblivion. Darkness. Silence. Demise. 

In other words death. 

  The fear that’s always there, whether it’s in the headache that you’re worried will turn into something incurable or the rustling sounds of the curtains that you think might be hiding a murderer here to end you. Death haunts our every move, makes us crave safety more than anything- because death is permanent. With death there’s no second chances. No fixing things. 

 Death has the finality that nothing else does and yet it's inevitable. 

 I was terrified of it. No, more than terrified actually- it was always at the back of my mind. While other kids asked for new toys to play with, I asked for a way to outrun death. After all, isn’t that what we all want? To somehow overcome our mortality and become invincible. You conquer death; you can do anything.  Your human fragility doesn’t bind you anymore.  Perhaps that’s why the ancient philosophers created the concept of immortality. Something only the gods had, that they occasionally blessed heroes with. 

 It’s the ultimate gift- and why wouldn’t it be?

 Immortality sounded perfect. 

A few more years of living, and my perfection became my immortality.

 Without trying, I became the person who no one had to worry about.  The one with stellar grades.  The one you could always turn to. The one who had her future figured out. The one who’s always happy, always smiling. Responsible. Adaptive. Obedient.

 It was amazing… until it wasn’t. 

Perfection and Immortality- both the kind of thing that you crave until you actually get it. It became a curse disguised as a blessing. Sure, you go down in history, but just like every mythological immortal, be it Heracles or the Olympians, they ended up the same way: bitter and alone, with no escape. 

 To get immortality, you have to sacrifice your humanity. 

 It makes you distant. Untouchable. People stop treating you like a…person; someone who has their own demons, dreams, fears, thoughts and feelings. They forget about you until they need something- be it in a group project where you do 90% of the work or a boon to give them superpowers. 

 And the worst part is it wasn’t always this bad. 

In the beginning, you can’t get off the high of it. At first, it seems like you have everything, until slowly, painfully, a ringing sound fills your ears. You can’t breathe quite as easily. All the blood rushes to your head. Your heart starts pounding, threatening to burst out of your chest. There’s the sound of cracked ribs. A chasm starts opening up, and then everything turns into a fight to make sure that the emptiness doesn’t swallow you whole. 

 What seemed like heaven at that time twists into this glamorous, gilded version of hell. 

Which once you’ve entered you realise there’s no escape. Every day, a piece of you gets chipped off. One by one. And by the time you notice, you’ve been broken past repair. That perfection is like being cut every time, but pasting on a smile to the same people who wielded those knives. It feels like holding up the sky but making it look like a pair of wings. 

 The further you go, there’s nothing left to win and everything left to lose. 

It feels like holding your breath, waiting for that inevitable moment when everything comes crashing down. It means fearing if anyone would want you, would even care about you, without that perfection. It means painstakingly stitching together thousands of layers of what others want you to be; that you can no longer find the girl before the expectations. It’s the golden chains that have been ruthlessly branded into your skin- shackles that everyone calls beautiful, mistaking them for jewellery. 

Everyone congratulates you for yet another achievement, no one knowing just how close you got to the edge this time. No one noticed the glistening eyes, the racing thoughts, or the clenched fists. You’re cut off from everyone, only seeing what they want to see, while you’re silently dying on the inside. 

Screaming for help.

Hoping that things will get better. 

Praying it’s not the end.

Begging that someone hears you. 

 Someone bothers looking long enough to see past that facade and still accepts you for you, flaws and all.

And after all that, death doesn’t seem so bad anymore; it isn’t the prison that I always thought it was. It’s the escape. Because while death is permanent, so is immortality. You aren’t invincible. You aren’t invulnerable. You’re just eternal. As it turns out, the human fragility that we despise so much is what makes our lives so special. Living forever isn’t the ultimate gift that we were made to believe. 

 And neither is perfection. Eventually, you’re not the one controlling it- it’s the one controlling you. The personal law that you can’t break, no matter how much it breaks you. It becomes your life force. It dominated me, and became my oxygen, while I became a mere puppet for its show. Yet as much as I hate it, I need it.

 Because I’m scared, without that perfection, who really am I? 

By Teeya Doshi