fallen into the depths

I tell people I'm from Gaza and I get pity, I get the "oh... do you have family there?" and I have to act tough, I am tough, it runs in my veins. Being from Gaza is expecting that reaction, the sorrow, it's dealing with dumbass people everyday, it's getting the "can you go there?" question. (No i cant btw).

I am from Gaza, I feel emotions just like everyone else, I feel anger and hurt and longing for a place I cant visit, I feel love and comfort and right now I feel alone and like im yelling at the world to pay attention and NO ONE CARES.

I am from Gaza, my thoughts belong to Gaza, my heart, my skin color, the way I speak, the way I say words a bit differently than the rest of the Palestinians, the way I wish I was a filmmaker to share my culture with the world.

I am from Gaza, i am aware of how different my people are, i am aware that i grew up differently, I am aware I grew up looking at the news from my grandparents television with my aunt waiting for news about her family, I am aware that I have trauma in my veins, I am aware that my culture is taken over and that I can't really speak about it, I am aware that not everyone experiences your aunt screaming that her brother died and yelling "He's apart of my soul, my soul died"

his dry little sarcastic bits gets me every time and like it's automatically funny but it felt so familiar...

this bastard.

and some more similar comparisons i think

It’s so strange, isn’t it? To think that fragiles humans could give so much fear to others that they have to cover their most human features. There’s species that look so much scarier than you - things that float, things with sharp razor teeth -, but you are the only ones that need to cover yourselves.

Everyone, however, seems to be terrified of humans. Their small teeth, single pair of eyes, weird-shaped nose… Separated, those things don’t scare anyone. But together, and combined with the bipedal shape and weird claws humans refer to as “nails”?

No one can look at all of this combined without wanting to run away.

Humans have found this to be strange, but they quickly got used to it. They made fancy masks, experimented with cloths, made new fashion trends to they could adapt to their new alien friends.There were laws regarding what humans should hide from others, too. They all varied from planet to planet, but were always there.

The earthlings wanted an explanation. Why were they the only ones who had to do it? Why just them? Why not others? Why?

They researched for a long time. Libraries, databases, rumours all across the Universe. Some even tried to contact spirits via an Ouija board in order to get some answers! It obviously didn’t work, and that story should be left for another day, but, eventually, an answer was… Almost found.

It was apparent that every single alien culture had a myth about the death of the Galaxy. A war so big and outrageous that it killed almost everything - and what was left either died, or was locked away for someone to find. And you know what one of the things that was left looked like?

Descriptions always referred to it as “bipedal, furless and scaleless, with two things that could see, two to smell, and another to consume”. The world’s first universal boogeyman! A little thing to scare children off.

Humans, however, didn’t know what to do with that information. Sure, they matched the description, but so many species also matched each other’s descriptions of monsters! Why would they be any different?

…

…

…

But you don’t care, do you?

You are a human from the 21st century. You are almost ashamed of how soft you are. How your insides break so easily, how all it takes is a single conflict for you to go to the hospital. You go to your little friends and talk about how fragile you are. “Look at me!”, you say, and you just don’t care. “Look at this scar I got!”

Stupid human. You are one of the few that can survive so many scars. Stupid, foolish human, who forgot that your parameters of survival were made inside a death world.

But you don’t care, do you? You will finish reading this. You will think of this as fun. You will forget.

Stupid. Foolish. Naive. Little. Human.

Born inside a death world, raised to hate, made to protect.

Earth was the prison someone made to contain you. And you grew to love it. You grew to care for it. You grew to become a part of it. And then you tried to get away from it, to distance yourselves from the nature that you broke your bodies to become a part of, because suddenly you felt all too good for it. And then you killed it.

But you were scared, weren’t you? You were soooo scared of killing your own little prison. You were so terrified for it. You replaced your claws with nails and your canines with fragile teeth and your eyes with souls to become a part of it. The prison made trees and changed its shape so it could be a part of you. And you were so scared of that sudden acceptance, weren’t you? Earth loved you, but all you wanted was to be alone.

So. You killed it.

And then you felt even worse. Because your species was made to be social, and the planet became a part of your stupid little pack, and now that there wasn’t anyone else to worry for, you began to worry about yourselves, and realized that your destiny was to die on this miserable wasteland all alone because you were too afraid to lose something you loved.

There’s acid on your stomachs, electricity on your bodies and blood on your veins. Things that kill. You were made to kill. Not care. Kill.

And you just had to kill the only part of you that didn’t feel remorse. You just had to do it, didn’t you? You killed it and ate it raw because you were starving, and then your little minds crumbled down in shame because now you could think clearly.

You rebuilt Earth. Made it love you again. Centuries of trying to do better, that’s what you did. Centuries of going to other planets and making them love you just like your home does, but you were small and stupid and did not realize that your parameters of living were based on a deathworld that hated you first before realizing you were a monster that was thrown away to die.

Everyone knows what you did. Everyone knows what you were. A monster, a weapon that killed the galaxy before being found and thrown away to the most lonely deathworld this Universe has ever seen.

And you just had to kill the part of you that made you hate the world, didn’t you?

The Assembly’s caller quickly arrived, showing holograms around. Then, she asked:

“Where is it?”

“Where is what?”

“This”, she responded, pointing to an hologram. “This place you humans call ‘Heaven’. Where is it?”

“Heaven?”

“Precisely”.

The human went silent for a second. They looked at the bigger alien, floating, and stared at her eyes. “Heaven isn’t a physical place. It’s… A belief some humans have”.

“I know how your human religions work. All I want is to know if there’s any indication of a physical place for it”.

“Heaven cannot be entered through this… Plane of existence. There isn’t a portal, or an area you take to access it”.

“Then how do you go to it after death?”

“We don’t ‘go to it’. Those who believe it might enter it, if they were good while alive”.

She wasn’t understanding. She shook her head, lifted herself up, pointed at the holograms, all of her findings, showed the human the images and the notes she had so carefully put together. “What do you mean?”

“Some humans believe they will go to a good place – Heaven – if, during life, they are good people. Kind, compassionate, always trying their best. Otherwise, they will go to a bad place – Hell”.

“No, no! What do you mean you don’t know how to go in there?”

“We know exactly how – by death”.

“You got it all wrong! There’s a moment in which you stop, in which you change. After this change you go somewhere else! How do you find that place?! Where is it?!”

“Are you talking about death?!”

“Death, termination, the end, who cares about your fancy names?! You change! You…”

“We don’t ‘change’, we die!”

“You change! Y-you change, your physical manifestations cease function, but what is after it?! How do you go to that place, how does it work?!”

“We don’t change, we die! It’s the end of our lives, our existence! We don’t actually know, scientifically, how does it work post-death! Some religions speculate of an afterlife, of a place where our souls go to, but that’s religion, it’s a belief, not something concrete!”

“What do you mean you don’t know?!”

The human flinched. The alien, with a trembling form more equal to water than something of flesh and bones, wept as she threw holograms and books around, pointing at the evidence, the feelings becoming too much.

“I-I don’t know!”, the humans responded. “Everything just stops!”

“Your minds, your beings, everything just stops existing?! Y-you can’t be real! I’ve seen it, I’ve felt it!”

She pointed at the human.

“You are all liars! You don’t want us to know about your changes! You don’t want us to know anything! I’ve felt it, I’ve seen your forms become one within the Other Planes as your bodies stopped moving for your deathworld to consume! The physical became bones and dust as your souls ascended!”

“W-what do you mean?!”

“You ascend! Your conscience, your mind, it all changes! A-and all I want is to know where and how to get to it! She isn’t following me anymore, she isn’t here and she hasn’t come back ever since that change! I do not care about what you humans want in exchange for this information, I will do everything to provide what you want! Just– please, I need to know where Verônica went!”

The room grew quiet. The intelligent species eyed each other as the human representative widened their eyes.

“I’m sorry”, they whispered. “Your friend is dead. She… She will not come back”.

“Liar. I know stories of yours, where the death came back, where your minds ‘haunted’ the ones who are ‘alive’. I know about your books, about your interviews and conversations with them! They do come back!”

“It’s not scientifically proven. These books can all be false”.

“You are a liar”, the alien growled. “I saw Verônica go. I saw her body change and release her. I saw it prepare itself for the change. It grew old. It slowly stopped working as before, it grew wrinkles, it grew pale hair, it grew to be beautiful and then it grew to release her”.

The human looked at an hologram, reading a small paragraph of text, informing themselves of a crucial detail before they sighed.

“Verônica died of old age, didn’t she?”

“That’s what our human colleagues called it”.

“Your species…”

“We do not grow old and fragile. We keep on existing until the end of it all”.

“I see”.

“We have been together for more than seventy years. I am sure she would want to stay with me, even with all of this time. Y-you humans have a reputation for being heartbreakers, but her love was genuine. She never left me. She refused to, many times. I’m sure… I’m sure she wouldn’t leave me this time”.

“I know”, the human agreed. “I’m sorry. I don’t think she can come back, even if she wanted to”.

The alien wept as the human hugged her, the water-like body shaping itself and becoming red and purple and green with pain for never experiencing such grief before. She cried, and she screamed, and she raged against human nature.