When only one remains untouched by time
It happened so quietly that, for years, I thought it was just luck or a fluke of the doctors. My friends grew older, their faces softened, their voices changed with the seasons. I stayed the same. At first, I called it a blessing: no aches, no new lines around my eyes, no need to say goodbye. I watched the ones I loved count their years, while I collected mine in silence, holding each birthday like a stone I could never put down.
The Double-Edged Gift
At first, immortality was luminous. I could do anything, love anyone, learn without the fear of running out of time. I spent years exploring art, languages, the corners of cities I’d only seen on postcards. Every moment held the thrill of possibility: nothing had to end, no door truly closed, there was always another chance. Joy lasted longer, discoveries could be savored. I saw places rebuilt, wounds in history begin to heal. To be untouched by age was to live a hundred lifetimes in one body.
But sweetness, without loss, can overwhelm. The first decades felt easy. I cared for my aging parents. I held the hands of friends as they moved on, promised to remember, promised not to let the world forget. I thought, maybe, the miracle would run out and time would claim me too. But it never did. I began to notice the gap. I stood still while the world moved. New music, new slang, new wars and fashions. I adapted, learned, but felt always half out of place, as if living in translation.
I loved and lost, and loved again. With each new friendship, each romance, the pattern repeated. I watched hair turn grey, laughter slow, dreams soften into routine. I was asked my secret. I lied, at first, then avoided the question. As the decades became centuries, I stopped trying to belong. I became a secret inside myself. My memories grew heavier, not with wisdom but with weight.
Sometimes, all it takes is one journal with a secret lock to hold what only you can remember.
Watching Them Leave
It is a strange thing, to sit by the bedside of someone you have loved for seventy years, and feel not the comfort of a shared ending, but the ache of being left behind. Again. Their last words are often the same: “Don’t forget me.” I never do. But memory becomes a burden. I remember voices no one else recalls. I keep secrets that have no living witnesses.
Sometimes, I thought of revealing myself, becoming a marvel for science or myth. But to be studied is to be alone in a different way. I stayed in the shadows, changing names, moving cities, never putting down roots too deeply. Eventually, even that became unnecessary. The world changed too fast. The familiar streets disappeared, the faces blurred, language shifted, even the sun felt colder.
The End of Time
There is a moment, after you have lost everyone, when time itself becomes unkind. The thrill of new technology, the promise of progress, all of it fades when you realize you will outlast every invention, every era. When the last city emptied, when forests turned to dust and oceans shrank into memory, I wandered through ruins, reading the names carved in stone, names I had once whispered in the dark.
Stars vanished one by one. The silence became heavier than any loneliness I had known. I learned to speak to myself, to count centuries by heartbeats. I sang songs for ghosts, told jokes to the wind. I kept journals in languages no one else would ever read. Even my own face began to feel unfamiliar, unmoored from meaning. The universe itself seemed to fold inward. I waited, not for rescue or revelation, but for something I could not name.
A Bittersweet Wish
To live forever is not to win against death. It is to carry absence like a second skin. If I could, I would trade every year unspent for one more day with someone who remembers my first laugh, my first mistake, the warmth of a crowded room. Immortality is only precious when measured against the risk of loss. Without that, time is a hallway with no doors, just the echo of footsteps you cannot follow.
And when the last light goes out. When even memory thins to nothing. The only thing left is longing. The hope, impossible as it is, that the end might finally arrive and I might greet it not as an enemy, but as a friend.
The Cost of Being Witness
Sometimes I think back to the brief years when the world still felt full, when strangers would become friends and every encounter mattered because it might be the last. Those fleeting connections meant everything. Now, every face is a ghost. I have watched cities rise and fall, seasons cycle past, rivers change course and then vanish. I have lived in every possible way: as student, lover, artist, builder, wanderer, and finally as a shadow. There is no one left to say my name, no language left to sing in. The silence of eternity is thicker than grief. I hold on to details: the weight of a hand in mine, the way sunlight used to slant through old kitchen windows, the wild relief of laughter breaking a spell of sadness.
What I have learned, what I would tell anyone if anyone could hear, is that even eternity is measured not by days unending, but by the sweetness and ache of the moments you fear might end. Immortality teaches you that meaning is a fragile thing, born in the spaces between loss and love. I am not wise. I am only what remains after all the questions stop mattering. And if there is any mercy left in the world, it is in remembering what it was to be human, finite, and afraid to lose what you hold most dear.
Sometimes even eternity needs a place to keep its memories safe. Discover a journal that holds what time can’t erase. On amazon.
Thanks for reading . Written by Jon from ClickWorldDaily
I write stories for those who feel things deeply, but quietly.
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Further Reading: Lingering Traces of Ordinary Time
Every Second Was Evidence
A city investigates disappearances that leave no suspect, only questions about what really lingers after loss.
A Life Lived Without Signing Terms and Conditions
Some chapters are left unfinished by choice. Sometimes what we refuse to accept shapes us most.
Held by a Ghost With My Eyes
When memory blurs with presence, a narrator searches for what can never fully be let go.
IMAGE CREDITS
All images in this article were generated using AI, crafted intentionally to illustrate symbolic and emotional depth. These visuals are shared under fair use for the purpose of thoughtful commentary and immersive storytelling.
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