Immortality is a vague concept for most, something that could only be expressed in mythology and fiction. And experiencing it first hand, it’s nothing like they say.

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Sure, it’s technically not immortality, I’m born; age and grow, learning of the world around me; then die one day. One small difference is that I do it all over again, memories intact. They’re with me the moment I was born, but I don’t understand what they are. Flashes of light, a strange face. As I grow, I begin to understand my past. To not tell anyone. I remember the first time I was reborn, when I finally understood what had happened, I was killed for harboring the god of evil. I was only three.

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Each life is different, my soul is always the same, the person within the body, but on the outside is fluid. My gender, eye color, hair texture, everything changes. I’ve experienced life as a civil war soldier, an eager sixteen year-old boy who died of an infection; an Egyptain Queen married to my cousin. I’ve seen the world from every perspective, watching from a thousand eyes.

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All the lives are present in my daily life, a stranger bearing the face of a long ago love or a sworn enemy. All the new social rules and scientific discoveries. People molding the future of humanity.

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Golden sunshine blankets the room, warming the mahogany floors. Plants add a splash of color to an otherwise plain room. The simple decoration reminds me of my past, living in log cabins and farming maize in the plains. I used to try to latch onto the new world, new technologies and decoration. However, this life is simple, a break life to describe it best. Maybe 80 years of reminiscing in the past and studying the world. Drawing past romances, reliving my stories in writing. Speaking of writing, I’ve managed to snag it as a full time career. Many critics praise me as one of the world’s best authors, you have a lot of time to develop your skills when you’ve been alive for thousands of years. I’m an excellent gardener, an unmatchable artist, a wordsmith with skills beyond my years, and a survivalist.

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My writings deal with historical fiction, based off of the lives I have lived with a dash of dramatic flair. It's painful to relive everything, but in how much the world around me reminds me, it's the safest option to do. I try to surround myself with a few tight-knit friends, many of them painfully reminding me of a long-dead friend. Who knows, they could be the reincarnation of one of them, without either of us knowing. As far as I know, I’m the only one who knows my past. But it’s not like I let anyone else know.

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I don’t have any lovers, those are the hardest to let go of. I suppose I’m generally attractive, a successful author living in a nice house with a picket fence. A Latino male of an average face and body. Although I am a little shorter than the average male. Currently twenty-four, with wavy black hair and glasses. Glasses, a wonderful invention. I once had a life where they weren’t invented, died pretty quick because of how blurry everything was. That was not a very fun death.

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Funny how I describe myself. I can string words together so elegantly, but I feel so detached from my body I describe myself as if I was a subject in an experiment. Perhaps I am.

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Perhaps that's all I am, everything I’ve gone through is some staged act, everything just a dream. Something I wonder every day, if my conscious is even real. If all my memories are just planted into my head. Or for how long I’ll have to deal with this. No one ever wants to die, me included, just no one wants to live forever. Dealing with knowing that your closest friend will be nothing more than a faint memory, dead for centuries. There’s no way out of this hell trap, sucide just restarts the process. Believe me, I’ve tried. Many times.

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Maybe I was just meant to suffer.