Entering the hospital that day I was hopeful for good news but prepared for the worst. Prancing in with my laced up gladiators and sundress I saw my mom. Her voice cracking as she spoke in a hush tone as she told me to follow her, doing so we waited for the elevator to open. I observed the marbled walls with the dashes of chocolate brown, creme, and a hint of peach that surrounded the elevator doors they were vibrant and full of life. As i peered off in a daze, she continued to speak. However, i wasn't listening. I heard bits and pieces; “Aggressive brain cancer”, “incurable”, “six to eight months” I had heard enough to give up. I looked up at her with the face i had seen so many times before and pleaded “Why does this always happen to us?” and in that moment I felt nothing, a pure substance of emptiness. Embracing each other in tears wishing for the inevitable.Everything i had once believed in had left me, empty and alone, i felt nothing.Stepping forward towards my grandfather to see the same look that I shared, nothingness. He felt nothing. The women he had been married to for forty years was just given a death sentence and he too felt nothing. It was only moments later that the words that left his quivering lips had left me where i stood today.

Folding and refolding the tissue i sat in the waiting room trying to hold myself together as best as i could. He expressed that the doctor said she would be fine, he said she was doing so well yesterday, she will make it. But it wasn't the nothingness inside of him that made the delusions it was the hope, the hope that what you heard was wrong, the hope that things will get better, when in reality they won't. Unable to keep my emotions inside i exited and went outside to get air, as i sat in the parking lot tears streaming down my face i searched my brain for answers to God's ways.I pondered every little detail of the doctor's words. Slowly making my way back inside I found myself. There I stood in between the marbled elevator doors silent, my body almost in a paralysis. I stared at the numbers increasing and decreasing and then increasing, I stood, I watched. Careless of the fact I hadn't pressed the button, reluctant to the face reality, unable to make any sudden movements. Behind me stood a doctor who pressed the button, as the doors opened he stared, “Miss are you getting on?” I didnt move. The doors closed and I was again alone and empty. Staring at the same wall I had earlier seen but in a different perspective. The perspective I had once viewed as hopeful and alive. The perspective that changed moments before. And I realized I believe in nothingness. I believe in the faulty cracks in humanity that leave you with nothing inside, the pureness of being alone and the gaping hole left behind when you are broken. I believe in the absence of life or existence. I believe in nothingness.