Some objects in space are massive enough to bend the space and time that surrounds them. Some people are like that, too. And I don't mean in terms of size; after all, some of the heaviest objects in space are the smallest. I mean in terms of the amount of their being. Some people are so great that everything around them – people, luck, even life – bends inwards, accommodating their very presence.

I was not one of those people. Not hours earlier, I had been staring at myself in the mirror and wishing I could lose 5 pounds. Now I felt weightless, insubstantial, barely enough to make a dent into the mattress on which I lay. I was dust; I had no gravity, could pull nothing towards me. I had no potential to burst into flame. I would never be a star, giving off my light into the universe.

I was the emptiness of space itself. I was nothing.