I haven't written in my diary for awhile and honestly it’s because I've been sitting here tryna wrap my head around what happened.
When the ants were biting me, I thought I was gonna die, but I still believed I’d be fine in the end. This time was different. This was my first real close call, and it changed me forever.
I remember being out in the field scanning plants for the index when my exo-suit suddenly started to shake, not the usual little tremor, but a violent, bone-rattling quake that made me actually begin to panic.
I pressed the reset button again and again, but nothing worked. Then after a long quiet pause, the locks clicked, and I was ejected straight into a bush
Unconsciously I covered my hands over my nose and mouth because every instinct drilled into me since childhood screamed for me to hold my breath. We had been told a thousand times: Earth’s air is too light, it will shred your lungs, it will kill you, but it got to the point where I truly couldn’t hold my breath any longer. My chest started to burn and it felt like I was drowning.
When I finally lost control and inhaled, it wasn’t death that met me. It was air, and it smelled fresh too. I don’t think I had ever truly taken a deep breath until that moment.
I was in sheer shock because all my life we’ve been told how dangerous it is to be without our exo-suits yet… Here I am, writing in my diary 3 days after the incident.
My brain has been going non-stop ever since. I can’t stop thinking about how much I don't know. The unknown. Two months on Earth, and it already feels like forever. Everything I thought I knew about the world, about safety, about what’s possible, was changing. I'm learning, seeing, feeling so much that I never expected. Sometimes it sucked, sometimes it was amazing, but it was all real. I don’t know what came next, or how it all settled, but I can feel it even now: this place, this time, changed me. Maybe that was the whole point.
If I’d stayed safe and comfortable, would I have ever experienced growth? Or would I still be waiting, wondering if it ever would be my turn.
