The Blue Marble

When I was first born, I had no idea what would grow in me. Millions and millions of years have passed by, and I can still remember each moment in my history. I have experienced dinosaurs trampling on the depths of my soul; asteroids that wiped out everything I knew but allowed me to start afresh; fish that swam to my own mysteries that I still have yet to discover and astronauts who flew out of my atmosphere to a new, unknown destination; art that provided a voice to the voiceless; bombs that silenced the innocent; the Moon taking over my seas and the Sun setting ablaze my trees. Love and hate. Life and death. Suicide and hope. Poverty and the riches. Good and bad. Beautiful and ugly, and so much more.

I know you all expected me to have the answers by now, but even I still don’t know who or what I am or was supposed to be. I don’t know what this was all for; the control I had over housing billions of lives contrasted by my pre-destined journey around the sun. I held life no one in the universe knew of; we are all meaningless, yet we created meaning.

But here we are. The end. The last living rose stands proudly above my core, and all I can think is how much this was all worth it.

—By Sinead M., 18, Wales, U.K.