A Sky Full of Stars

(This story contains suicide and strong language)

I don’t remember how to look at the stars anymore.

Looking at the stars may not be something you learn how to do, like riding a bike or writing your name. It may not be something you forget how to do, like knitting a scarf or writing in cursive. But I forgot how to do it.

Now that I know what the stars look like, up close and personal, I can’t see them properly any longer. They’re so small down here, just little specks in the sky. Logically, I know that they are stars. Up there, glowing in the abyss, bright as anything, those are the stars. I can name them. There’s Ursa Major and the Big Dipper and Polaris and Sirius and Betelgeuse and this and this and this. I can draw a map of them as easily as I can write my name. I could give whole lectures just about one of them. I know them like I know my own mind, my own heart.

But those, up there? Those aren’t really the stars.

They just can’t possibly be. Those couldn’t be all that they are down here. I’ve seen them, and in no place, in no world, in no universe, in no timeline could they possibly look like that. Reduced to dots in a big black sky. Pinpricks in a sea of darkness. No, they couldn’t possibly be that.

That’s why I don’t know how to look at the stars anymore. Or rather, I can’t.

Of everything down here, I think maybe the closest thing to the stars is the lens flares of the cameras.

I see a lot of cameras and a lot of flashes and a lot of faces nowadays. Traveling to space and orbiting the stars for a couple years means fame, I suppose.

When I get up there, in front of the great big lights and the prying eyes, I think maybe I’m back there again. In my shuttle, light-years away from anything I’ve ever known, sharing lunch with something that was in the world long before me and would remain long after me. I can nearly breathe again.

The illusion is always broken by the short-sighted question of some preppy reporter.

“What did you eat up there?”

“What did you do to entertain yourself?”

“What’s it like to see the stars?”

A natural question to ask someone who’s traveled around a celestial body, I suppose. But I hate that question the most of all.

How do you explain taste to someone who has never eaten? How do you explain the smell of home to someone who has never lived in one? How do you explain breath to someone who has never lived?

The question angers me because I can not reconcile with the fact that someone may actually think there’s an answer to that. What we’ve been studying for eons, reaching for since the dawn of time, I’ve seen. And I’m expected to explain something like that to someone like them?

I can’t tell them any of this, however, and despite me reaching the absolute apex of my career, I have too much left to lose to go crazy like that in front of an audience. So I always answer with some vague response about how beautiful they were, and how they shone, and how I would give anything to go back again just to see them one last time.

In truth, I don’t think I would go back to them in any circumstance. I don’t think I could ever bring myself to go back. I don’t know if anything would be worth it because I don’t think that our reunion would allow me to leave. And there’s not enough oxygen or food or water to support me living the rest of my days out there.

”What’s it like to see the stars?”

It’s like listening to your favorite song and then forgetting the melody. It’s like walking through your childhood home and then watching it burn down. It’s like embracing your lover and then hearing the tone of their flatlining heart, the heart that you knew, the heart that was yours, the heart that was everything, until suddenly it wasn’t anything at all.

I hate that question.

Recently, I’ve had a really hard time talking to anyone. My wife, in particular.

I came home expecting an argument. That was how we had left off when I lifted off, and I expected to pick it up right where we ended. I had already decided what I was going to say, in fact; mapped out the perfect response to elicit a heartfelt apology from both parties.

But when I crossed the threshold and the AC lifted goosebumps off my skin, it was as if I had entered a ghost’s house.

She was sitting on the ottoman, watching the newest episode of Dateline in silence. She had a warm mug of black tea in her hands, which I knew had a spoonful of honey and a few drops of lemon juice. She took it no other way. I think that of everything about her, I would remember that through all my lifetimes.

I set down my bag and took off my shoes, expecting her to look up at any moment, eyes either sparkling or burning, mouth either wide with surprise or turned down into a grimace, arms either flinging open to embrace me to crossing over her chest like a promise. Instead, she took another sip from her mug and watched as the husband in the episode slapped his wife across the face.

The silence felt like a snake around my neck; I felt more deprived of oxygen in that moment than I did among the stars. I took the remote from where it sat next to her and turned the TV off silently.

Maybe I should’ve spoken to her first, or maybe I should’ve waited, or maybe I should’ve done just about anything else. But I didn’t, and I can’t go back and change what I did now.

She looked up at me finally, then. Her eyes were blank brown seas of nothing, face relaxed but closed. She watched me for a few seconds longer, as if searching for something in my stance or in my gaze, before she spoke.

”Welcome home.”

The words were soft and fell like stones, but they didn't feel angry. Rather, they felt like nothing at all. They seemed like an invitation, though, so I took her mug and bent down to give her a hug. It was like embracing a wooden board, except this board smelled like my wife, and it felt like my wife, and by all accounts it should’ve been my wife. But it wasn’t, it couldn’t have been, just as the stars couldn’t have been those dots in the sky.

We haven’t spoken much since then, not beyond the most necessary questions and answers.

“Are you going to shower?”

“What do you want for dinner?”

“Are you coming to bed?”

Maybe if I was a braver man, I would work up the courage to talk to her. Properly, I mean. Maybe if I hadn’t been gone so long, it wouldn’t be like this. Maybe if we had never married it wouldn’t hurt this much. Maybe I wish it hurt more than it does. But maybes never helped anyone or changed anything, so I just put her nods and closed words in my pocket, letting them weigh me down like stones.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes since coming back down. Big and small, obvious and nebulous. My biggest mistake, however, occurred in a symphony hall, two weeks into my sabbatical, in Tampa.

I knew before I had even come back that I was gonna be put on sabbatical for at least four weeks. It wasn’t a question or even a decision my director made; it was a requirement, an inevitability. Upon landing, my mission director shook my hand, congratulated me, and then told me to get the hell out of his sight. He couldn’t have spoken for longer than a minute, total. He had never been a man of many words, which I used to appreciate. Now I just wish anyone would actually speak to me. It feels like everyone around me is holding their breath, just waiting for me to break.

Early into my sabbatical, I found myself aching for something to do. I had never been good at sitting still, or leaving well enough alone. My wife was still working, so I couldn’t spend time with her. I’m not sure I even wanted to.

So once I discovered that The Florida Orchestra was playing The Planets by Holst, I knew I had to go. I had dabbled in the cello all throughout high school, daydreaming that I would be the next Yo-Yo Ma. I figured that at least one night of the arts could make up for my career change. There was nowhere else for me to be, after all. I could think of no better way to spend my night than drive out a few hours and become anonymous, pretending to be a normal person for just a while. I just needed a little while.

The concert hall was huge. Having been stuck in a shuttle for so long, confined to the tightest quarters and the smallest space, made the enormity even more pronounced.

I had box seats, an upgrade from the orchestra once they discovered my identity. I didn’t have the time to get used to being anything more than a normal person, but the free things were a good bonus.

Soon, the lights darkened and the concertmaster entered stage right. He nodded to the oboist, who began to play a tuning note. It cut through the air like a knife, high and pure, before being matched by the woodwinds. The oboist cycled through a B flat and then back to an A, before, finally, the conductor entered. He raised his hands above his head, and it felt as if the entire world held its breath.

Then, his hands crashed down and the show began.

And I was transported.

Music has a strange ability to touch the soul in ways that words cannot. Just a few notes strung together, and yet it immerses the senses and strips the soul bare. The sound is enveloping, enrapturing, entrancing, until all that is felt are the notes and all that matters is the melody. As if all that has ever been and all that ever will be are the flats and the sharps and the pitches and the harmonies and all the little motifs in between. Music can make you feel horribly sad, amazingly joyous, dizzyingly powerful, and everything in between. It can make you feel like you could eat the world whole.

I felt that, then, like never before. It felt like I was everywhere and nowhere. I was in a box seat in Tampa, hours away from home. But I was also on my bed, my wife cuddled close to me. But I was also light-years away, orbiting Betelgeuse and letting it become my whole world. Finally, I was back up there. Among the stars, in the sky, alone but not lonely. Never lonely.

The music stopped too soon, and I shot back into my seat. My box seat, in a concert hall that was too big, on a night that had the sort of air that stuck to the skin, surrounded by pretentious assholes who had probably fallen asleep by now. I couldn’t bear to be there a second longer.

I ran out into the night and bolted home. Except the night air was too damp, and it smelled like rain, and it was so damn dark, except for the stars, those goddamn stars which weren’t actually the stars because they were just cruel pretenders, they were just trying to trick me, and I could see my wife and my mission director and my parents and none of them would say anything to me and I just wanted them to say something, to fucking say anything at all, and maybe I was screaming or maybe I was shouting, or maybe I was completely silent, but it didn’t matter at all because now I remembered what it was like up there, and now I felt the distance like a thousand cuts on my heart, and now it was too late to rid myself of that distance, which gnawed at me eternally.

Before I even realized I had shifted the car into drive, I found myself at the sea.

The beach was entirely empty. I’m not sure that even mattered, though. I think I still would’ve acted the same with an audience of billions.

I stripped down to my boxers, took a second to consider, and then stripped those off too. There was no value in humility where I was going. I stood and gazed out at the horizon for a while, allowing the wind to whisper across my skin, the sand to sink between my toes. I felt each grain like a needle, like a knife. It was too much. All of it was too much.

I ran to the sea and stared at the waves, allowing them to wash memories back into my mind.

I saw the face of my mother, open and beaming. I saw the scowl of my father, who I never was good enough for. I saw the lips of my first girlfriend, the eyes of my college roommate, the tie of my astrophysics professor, and the hands of my best friend. I saw my wife, holding her mug of tea and staring blankly back at me. They were all lined up on the horizon, waiting for something to happen.

I walked into the ocean, going until it was ankle height, and then knee height, and then chest height, and then chin height, and then I was floating on my back, staring up at the sky.

The sky was pitch dark, save for a scattering of stars. Those damn stars, winking down at me, masquerading constantly for their naive audience. I closed my eyes.

The water crashed all around me, occasionally spilling over my face, sometimes receding enough to expose my chest to the air. It beckoned for me, pulled at me with a thousand hands, as if it already knew what I was about to do. As if it has always known, and was just waiting for the punchline.

With Polaris as my witness, I finally allowed myself to sink.

That feeling, when one dips below the water, when everything becomes blue, when the senses are muffled and the world pauses. That is what it felt like in space. Pressure on all sides, pushing constantly, as if testing just how much the human body could bear. How much I could bear. Turns out it wasn’t enough. It’s never enough.

My lungs ached for air, but I relished the feeling. I was alive. For the first time since returning, I was present, I was here, I was there, I was everywhere, and dammit I was alive. As my lungs ached and my head spun, I finally began to drift away.

I left the Earth for the last time a few minutes after. I swam amongst the stars, floated through constellations, touched the surface of the sun. I sailed across Saturn’s rings and breathed in Jupiter’s air, and crushed an asteroid with my bare fist. I was nowhere and everywhere, and I was nothing and I was everything, and I was what I was always meant to be, and I was alive. The smell of honey (a spoonful) and lemon juice (a few drops) chased me through the universe and I was alive.

And finally, mercifully, peacefully, beautifully, I dissipated into stardust, a gentle smile drifting across my face.