On June 3rd, 1982, at 2:05 PM, a girl named Nia was thought of for the very first time.
She had no body. No brain. And No name. She was nothing more than a faint red line on
a pregnancy test. A symbol of a potential person.
On January 22nd, 1983, after it was determined that she was a girl, her parents decided what
to name her, and Nia was officially thought of for the first time with the name Nia.
About 3 months later, Nia was seen for the very first time
without a screen. Awoken to the stark light of the hospital
delivery room, Nia had no idea where she was. Or who she was.
She was, for this one brief fleeting moment, a completely blank
slate, nobody and somebody at the same time, free to be whoever
she could. On June 1st, 1988, Nia was thought of as a
friend for the first time after her mother’s friend’s daughter Sarah asked Nia if she
liked the TV show Danger Mouse. Nia said yes, even though she didn’t know what Sarah was
talking about. Being 5 years old, Nia thought it was better to say yes and not seem different.
Sarah liked Nia because of this, and they hung out every week and watched the show together.
Nia didn’t really like the show. She liked that Sarah liked her though, so
she never said anything.
On March 9th, 1991 Nia was thought of as annoying and weird for the first time after dancing
by herself during 2nd grade recess. A group of her classmates mocked her, and one girl
told her she was weird. Nia didn’t dance again for several years.
On October 14th, 1994, Nia was thought of as attractive for the first time after a boy
named Sam met her at school and liked the way her hair looked on one of the rare days
Nia wore it down. He told Nia that he liked her and thought her hair was pretty. Nia wore
her hair down almost every day after, even though she kind of liked it more in a ponytail.
On August 16th, 1997, Nia was hated for the first time after breaking up with her first
real boyfriend, Tim. Tim told Nia she was a horrible, inconsiderate person who only
cared about herself. Nia worried that maybe he was right and got back together with him
to prove that she wasn’t. Not long after getting back together, Tim broke up with her.
On June 29th, 2005, Nia was thought of as a fulltime employee for the first time after
being hired as a financial analyst at a large media company. It seemed to make her dad really
happy when she first considered business and finance as a
major in college, and other people seemed to think of her as
intelligent and competent in the work, so she stuck with it,
hoping it would continue to impress him and other people she
knew and might know in the future. She never really came around
to liking it herself. On April 10th, 2012, Nia was thought of for
the first time as a wife after marrying her 7th boyfriend, James. She wasn’t sure if
she was ready when James proposed, but didn’t want to hurt him and deeply feared the possibility
of being thought of as old and alone after her mother repeatedly hinted at the approaching
idea. On October 22nd, 2016, Nia was thought of
as a mother for the first time as her first born child Katie uttered the word “mom”
as she looked up at Nia. Katie knew nothing about Nia yet, but saw the source of all comfort
and safety and love in Nia’s eyes. On December 8th, 2019, Nia was thought of
as a boss for the first time after being promoted to corporate financial manager at a major
multinational clothing corporation. Nia wasn’t sure if she wanted the position and hated
the idea of bossing people around, but she wanted her parents and friends and strangers
she might talk with to think of her as a success. Moreover, she
wanted her legacy to have some significance. For her children
and her children’s children to look back at her and think of her
as a someone who was someone. Someone who was important. And
this job gave her the opportunity to make and influence major
financial and business decisions for one of the largest cultural
brands in the world. She took the job and stayed in it for the
rest of her career. During her time, she helped make some of the
largest acquisitions and mergers in the company’s history,
helping it reach a new height in popular culture. This made Nia
quite wealthy and sought after in the industry. She hated what
the expectations made her become. She became somewhat cold and
forceful to her employees, and hyper-focused on money and work,
giving up most of her time for herself outside of work.
On august 22nd, 2035 Nia was thought of in a way that resembled the way Nia thought of
herself for the first time. 1 year earlier, Nia was diagnosed with the disease known as
Cystic fibrosis, in an unusual, rare case of late-stage diagnosis. The doctor told her
she potentially only had a year or two left. As time passed, Nia began to care less and
less. About everything. She began to uncover and reveal
her deeply withheld insecurities and fears and character traits
as they began to fill with the air of insignificance and triviality.
While in the hospital, during one of the last few coherent
conversations she
ever had, she told her husband James that she never truly felt
like herself around him. Or anyone for that matter. That she had
spent most of her life accommodating other people’s perceptions
of her, as if her concern was always about how she was
experienced in the minds of others and never how she was
experienced in her own. How she wanted so badly to be liked and
remembered by everyone as competent, and beautiful, and
agreeable, and happy, and perfect, and successful, and now she
was about to die without ever really being known by anyone at
all. As Nia revealed more and more to James, for
a brief moment, for the first time in her whole life, Nia
was thought of in the same way she was thinking of herself, synchronized
perfectly inside her and James’s mind. In this moment
of unexceptional, naked candor, James and Nia felt a love and
boundlessness unlike anything they had ever before and ever would
thereafter. 3 months later, Nia was thought of for the
first time as someone who was dead. Everyone she knew attended
her funeral. Some of her closest friends and family members
said incredible things about her at the service. How beautiful
she was. How sweet and kind she was to everyone. How hardworking
and successful she was. A couple people secretly
thought about how they didn’t really like her or care about
her all that much and
just wanted the service to be over so they could go home. Nia
didn’t know what anyone thought or said. She was dead.
On March 5th, 2051, Nia was thought of for the first time as a grandma. Her second child,
Nick, showed his first son, Tyler, a photo of Nia in a family photo album. “This was
my mom.” Nick told Tyler as he pointed to her photo. “She would be your grandma. Can
you say grandma?” Tyler, just 4 years old, looked at the photo and let out a soft, “Hi
Gandma,” leaving out a letter or two, but understanding what he meant. The wrinkles
in Nia’s face in the photo made Tyler laugh a little. Then Nick flipped the page to a
different photo of someone else. On December 30th, 2107, Nia was thought of
for the last time by someone who ever personally knew her. As Katie, Nia’s last surviving
child died, the last clear, real memory of Nia, dissolved with Katie’s mind.
On January 2nd, 2372, at 3:52 PM, Nia was thought of for the last time ever. Her only
remaining photos and information held in a data sever at an ancestry company for people
to learn about their family heritage. A young man named Sonace, employed by the company,
was instructed that day to clear out all data servers containing unused full profiles older
than 200 years old.
Before deleting them, Sonace looked through some of the
profiles. As he looked at the photos, he wondered who the people
were. He wondered what life must have been like for them. He
stopped on one particular photo. It was Nia. He thought she
looked really friendly and happy. She had a smile that seemed
completely genuine, as if she spent her whole life practicing
it. Then he toggled to the next profile. Within the hour, Sonace cleared the server.
With on delete key, all traces of Nia were gone forever.
Later that night, while trying to fall asleep, Sonace
wondered, without thinking about anyone specific, if any of the
people that he deleted would have lived differently if they
thought about the fact that one day, they wouldn’t be thought
about at all. This thought sent a strange sensation down
Sonace’s entire body. Then he thought about his big presentation
at work in two days that he had been cripplingly worried about
for the last month. He suddenly wasn’t that nervous and felt a
little moment of freedom and peace. Then, he fell asleep.