2009-2026

My life in a dash

My life feels so unimportant, knowing that in the end when I’m finally free, nothing I ever did will matter. No one will talk about what I accomplished or the embarrassing things I have done that keep me up at night, they won’t matter. People will only notice that I am now gone, the death rather than the life I had lived.

Sometimes people are so focused on the years – a birth year and a death year – that they completely ignore the small, seemingly insignificant dash. Although it is the dash that holds all the value of who I really am, not the day I died. It’s so small yet contains my entire existence.

That dash represents everything that has made me who I am, that has led me to this moment; my inevitable death. It symbolises the first time I ever cried, and the last time too – the last time I ever allowed the pain to show itself physically.

The dash contains my first steps, when I learned how to speak and laugh with the unburdened joy of childhood. It is every mistake I ever made, everything I have ever accomplished, every person I have ever loved, every moment I regretted. That dash is me. It is who I am, yet people only focus on the years. Which is ironic, because even when I was alive I felt ignored and negligible, so I am destined to be disregarded after death, too.

But the years are not what is important. I may have died in 2026 but I lived in that dash. That life may have been cut short, but the world continued its relentless spin nonetheless.

It makes me wonder why, in such a temporary world, where moments are sacred and memories are fleeting, are we so focused on death. Because at the end of the day, I will not be remembered for who I was or the life I lived, and rather my identity will become parallel with my death as though that is all I am and all I ever was. As if death was the goal rather than the unfortunate, inevitable end to a life that could no longer continue.

It’s funny really, how such a complex thing such as life can fit into such a minuscule mark. How in the end, every heartbreak, every goodbye, every tear cried, every moment I loved, every person I lost, and every battle I fought, will mean nothing.

In a way it’s comforting, believing that my life is so insignificant that people can just glance over it without any doubts. It makes death sound peaceful — painless, in fact.

It’s nice to know that I am no longer just a vessel of mistakes and regrets that make up an imperfect human.

I am now simply just a date for the rest of eternity. And that’s all I will ever be known as again, for now I am dead and my life has been entirely forgotten.