(Not exactly the prompt)

I am not an astronaut. I am not even an astronomer. I was sent to space on a conquest of understanding; to ease a fear.

Technology is not the thing I am afraid of, it is fact that man wants to play god so badly, he’ll try to invent something to make him not feel so human. Ten years ago, I would have never thought past Neptune, there’s a lot to process beyond that.

I wrote a book about the horror of the universe, about a woman who was so desperate to know the warmth of another galaxy. She believed she could comprehend the scale of the universe, but she was foolish enough to cast herself into the emptiness between the stars and she lost herself, and what it meant to be human.

I wrote in the book that being a human meant being oblivious to your existence, that expectations and experiences remained tied to earth, tied to a selfishness, I suppose. Every person who read my book was astounded with how my writing grappled with reality, and I became well regarded and won prizes for my book.

The going into space part was a gift from the real rocket scientists. And they asked me to document the stars as I saw them in the most beautiful, powerful, and poetic way possible. I had always thought a researcher would be good at writing and such, but everyone was so eager to know what I might happen to see. Perhaps they thought I might reveal another plainly hidden secret of existence.

The scientists told me they had sent people into space hundreds of thousands of times over, but I would get to see every planet up close. I would be traveling so fast for over a year that time would be different when I came back. This was something I pushed to the side and did not think about.

My journey began some time after, and I did as they asked. I found my writing profoundly difficult to decipher once I was written it simply because I wrote everything I was thinking as it happened, but it did turn out remarkably complicatingly beautiful.

Jupiter’s swirly storms reminded me of the layered skirts of a ballerina, of how they always fit perfectly as they sway. I thought Saturn’s rings were more of a rib cage than something decorative. I wrote that Neptune was a place there lonely people cast their lightning. And since then, I was never quite sure what I meant about that.

It was only the moments after I passed Neptune was when I stopped writing. I felt so heavy in those seconds, even though there was no gravity to hold me down.

The darkness was threatening, an alarm that perhaps I should have payed attention to for some time. Because beyond the fracturing ozone layer of my little blue planet, there is truly only void, and sometimes things that remind me of home.

Doesn’t it feel so impowering that you of all things have life? Just the perfect timeline of events took place and now you’re existing, not concerned or considerate of that fact that there is an expanding universe that goes on forever.

And if you’re scared of infinite darkness and the heat of stars that feel larger than yourself, don’t be. If you think that nothing matters, that in the grand scheme of things, you are nothing, then I can assure that perhaps we are nothing. But you’re human, and you shouldn’t have to think past yourself, that’s what makes us human, all of us.

However, I did learn one thing, and I found it in myself to feel comforting. The universe is constantly expanding, as many people are aware of. But one day, when humans will surely be gone, the universe will run out of things to keep going, and likewise collapse into itself. So it won’t last forever. And all starts die out eventually.

There is no infinity, nothing lasts forever.