What really matters

To me, life was an incandescent glow of pure hatred and envy.
It didn’t matter if my mother was dead or alive, because nobody cared.
& like every other life, the world would move on, and I will become nothing but an unwritten part of history.
Every day was painfully alike. Made up of an accumulation of insignificant moments.
Brushing my teeth, combing my hair, getting teased and beaten; all these moments, all these tiny deeds that have accumulated and has become what is now my life.
And each day I would wait, and think that there was a reward waiting for me in the end.
That all my rightful doings would accumulate into something. Some type of reward.
But I knew better to think I was going to become somebody inherently special, because I wasn’t. I was the same as everyone else with a story.
Until I woke up one day and realized, that I was getting old.
I had to accept the choices I made that made me who I am now.
All the memories and thoughts that I knew intimately, and all the feelings that defined who I was; had all disappeared. And to others, those precious memories are nothing. They are non-existent.
I was non-existent. There was no need for me because I was nothing.
Then one day as I was walking to school, an woman smiled at me. She thanked me for holding the door for her. I smiled back, and it felt so good. So full and happy..
It was then that I realized that it didn’t matter how abrupt life was. It didn’t matter if I was in any way significant to the world. Life is a beautiful thing, no matter how small the happiness will shine.
And as I smiled at that woman, I forgot my troubles; all the beatings and teasing.
And it just so happens that a single smile can make me forget all the hatred in the world.
All that matters is that I was happy, in that small expanse of time.
I am alive for myself, because I matter to me.
That was all that mattered.