Choice of Rebirth

Like countless others, I was just another cog in the machine of life. Each day blurred into the next—a monotonous cycle of waking up, working tirelessly from morning until evening, and receiving a paycheck barely worth the effort. Five days a week, the same routine. The same exhaustion. The same feeling of being trapped in a life I never truly owned.  

I watched the rich from afar, envying their freedom, their ease. How effortless it seemed for them to live, while I toiled away, barely scraping by. If not for my parents, I would have abandoned this struggle long ago. They were the only reason I kept going.  

I thought this would be my fate forever—a life dictated by survival, devoid of meaning.  

Until now.  

One moment, I was at my desk, staring at the computer screen, my fingers moving mechanically over the keyboard. The next, everything vanished. The hum of office chatter, the flickering of fluorescent lights, the dull weight of fatigue—all of it disappeared in an instant.  

I was somewhere else.  

An abyss. A void so deep it swallowed sound and time itself. There was no floor beneath me, no air to breathe, no body to move. The only thing that remained was my consciousness—compressed into a small, gray blob floating in an infinite sea of darkness.  

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Panic surged within me, but I had no voice, no breath to scream.  

*Am I dead?*  

The thought struck like a hammer, unraveling every shred of reason I had left. *How? When? Was it sudden? Did I suffer?* A barrage of questions, but no answers. Only silence. Only emptiness.  

Worse than the unknown was the sensation creeping in—the slow, gnawing decay of my very being. Something in this darkness was feeding on me, dissolving my mind, my memories, my soul.  

Then, a light.  

Faint at first, barely more than a flicker in the void. But it grew, expanding, pushing back the suffocating darkness. Warmth radiated from it, gentle and inviting. It was like the first breath of spring after a brutal winter, like dawn breaking after an endless night.  

And then, a thought, clear and absolute, not my own yet undeniably meant for me:  

**"Step into the light, and you shall be reborn."**  

Reborn?  

The word sent a ripple through me. *Does that mean I’m truly dead?*  

Denial hit me like a wave. *No, I can’t be dead! How could I have died? What about my parents? How will they feel when they find out I’m gone?*  

Regret clawed at me, bitter and suffocating. *Was this really all my life amounted to? A mediocre job, a cycle of exhaustion, a life spent merely enduring?*  

Fear. Despair. Anger.  

I raged at the unfairness of it all, at the wasted years, at the unknown fate awaiting me. But no matter how much I resisted, the truth remained.  

I had only two choices.  

Stay here, trapped in this void, and let my existence be swallowed whole.  

Or step into the light and embrace the unknown.  

The latter was terrifying, but at least it held the possibility of something more.  

Slowly, I moved. Or rather, I willed myself forward. The small, gray light that was my soul drifted toward the radiance, drawn to it like a moth to a flame. The closer I got, the more the warmth wrapped around me, soothing the fear gnawing at my thoughts.  

And then—  

I stepped through.  

The darkness behind me collapsed, swallowed by the brilliance.  

I did not know where I was going, what I would become, or if I would even remember this moment.  

But I had chosen.  

And for the first time in my life—perhaps even in my death—I felt free.