I didn’t exist for a long, long time. For any of it, in fact. Time moved along without me, unaware I’d ever wade in it. I’m terrified of the nothingness of death, though it’s where I come from. Death is the return; this part is just the blip. Our timelines are these great, flat circles of infinite radius, and do you see that there? There– zoom in. That’s not schmutz on the screen; the pencil didn’t slip. That bump is our time alive. From here, it doesn’t look so thrilling, but I’m anxious pretty much the whole time. About the blip-ness. I feel it constantly– the curvature of my bump. My second derivative.

My therapists all say: Do you want to feel this? Do you want the threat of your ultimate disappearing to consume your life?

What life? This blip? How can I say, “What’s the point?” without being handed a pamphlet about depression? Is the only reason you’re not depressed because you’ve contorted your body in just the right way to avoid the walls around you? You numb yourself to the bump, or you never even noticed it. You grew up on a moving train, without windows, that didn’t rattle or turn, so the pool balls moved on the felt in a predictable way, and you just assumed you were still. You never even challenged your inertial frame; I’m not jealous of you!

No, no one remembers entering this. I think that would be Way Too Much. Nothing to Something is the biggest jump this universe allows. We are Big Bangs. Small Bangs. Dirac delta functions. Other transitions can’t even compare– hydrogen to helium, self-gravitating stars to exploded fragments– things to other things. Ha! I have been and will be nothing. I transcend thing-ness. My atoms are recycled; I’m not.

…Right?

There’s no way that I can form again. There’s no way that these exact amounts and configurations of carbon and nitrogen in my brain could find each other and suddenly switch me back on– rip my consciousness back out of the void for a split second inside some black hole before blowing apart again. RIGHT? That is the most fucked-up version of reincarnation imaginable. Boy, can I wind myself up.

I thought studying physics would push me even further into atheism– press my face down into the soil and scream, “SMELL THE SHIT! THIS IS ALL THERE FUCKING IS!” But statistically, we shouldn’t be here, which means either: There are infinite universes, and ours is the only one with people in it, or someone switched this one on for laughs. Someone said: In this one, let’s make more matter than anti-matter and let things collect and solidify and eventually birth-conscious monkeys, and wouldn’t that be a fun way to end Friday’s meeting?

My grad school professors said that the Naturalness Problem isn’t really a problem, and that made me even more suspicious. They know something! We have proven over and over again how fine-tuned this all has to be in order to chug along. Who is doing the tuning?

I hope no one. I spent a lot of time in high school arguing with Christian kids. Or, again, maybe there are infinite universes, and only ours led to bodies that know they’re alive. And I know that vegans think other animals besides humans know they are alive too, but then where are their cities and cave paintings and existential rants? I digress.

They ask me why I can’t let go of death. Why can’t you let go of your entire body? Why can’t you float above yourself every once in a while to regroup? Maybe if I think about it hard enough, I can figure out a way to upload my consciousness into a computer or a primordial root system and figure out from there how to exist even longer and circumvent the sun’s explosion and, even later, the Big Crunch. But what after that? I need to figure out if Big Bangs are, in fact, two older universes colliding. Or another universe’s Big Crunch. How do I jump from one universe to the other?

All that sounds like a lot of work. Another solution is bending my bump into a loop– at least allowing me to live in an illusion of infinite time. I’m already part-way there.

In kindergarten, I was sitting on the rug, listening to my teacher read. I remembered what my mother had said– that we were going to California for summer vacation, and was suddenly so excited. I could watch TV and drink soda on the plane! I slowly and carefully imagined everything about the plane– the smell, the cold circulating air, the armrest. I saw myself sitting there, in the clouds, content and carefree.

And then, that summer, I found myself on the plane, drinking a Sprite and watching The Flinstones. And suddenly, I pictured myself in that classroom, on that rug. The smell, the itch on my tights, the sound of my teacher’s voice. I pictured myself sitting there, picturing myself on the plane, and felt I was waving to myself through time on both ends of a wormhole.

Yes, I’m already part-way there. I feel the flimsiness of the bump– the impurities in its foundation. I’ll bend it slowly, over time, like a sculptor. I’ll get stronger. And when I’m done, I’ll relax into the loop, perfectly contorted to avoid the great circle of nothingness.

Violet Piper is a Brooklyn-based writer pursuing an MA in Creative Publishing and Critical Journalism.