Abandoned

This is my absolute favorite aesthetic ever. Abandoned, overgrown cities, whose skyscrapers are now fully wrapped by nature; trees taking the streets back for themselves, wild animals retaking their old territories, and water running down from previously inhabited buildings' cracks from the rain. A thick, gray sky stretches across the horizon. It seems like seeing sunlight is nothing short of a wonder in this world.

You look at these places and for a brief moment, you realize the heaviest of truths: those were all homes to people you never met, but whose lives were as important to them as yours is to you. There was life sprouting from all windows of the buildings, apartments and establishments. Noise, sound, music, blasting from every corner. From conversations in the subway to a man playing the sax while asking for some spare change next to someone's favorite café. This was all alive. Full of lives.

But the thing is that it never stopped. We, humans, just left the scene. But life kept going. Days kept passing and everything else moved on. Grass grew between the cracks of concrete roads. Vines took over street lights. Rain and lack of maintenance brought buildings to the ground. Animals came back to where they belonged, and a new ecosystem was born from the fossils of our past one.

And then, when there are no more animals capable of consciousness, when the last human ceases to be, it'll be the last time buildings had an explanation to exist other than for nature to claim as theirs. No one will be there to question why huge blocks of metal and rock stretch towards the sky, or what they used to inhabit, or if their inhabitants felt things. They will just be structures in the sandbox of everything else but us.

I was born in a world where humans rule. Where we overtake, we build, we transform, create and destroy to our liking. I never saw what the places I walk by used to be before they were even places. There is something, I don't know exactly what, about seeing nature take back its space. It is not a sad feeling. It feels like completion. Almost as if you could say "We did all of this. And we loved it. And now there's no more left of us to love it. So it's your turn to transform it into what you'll love".

And you can wander through these once full of life streets and realize life never left, it just adapted. It's slower, more silent, and lasts an eternity longer. It's peaceful. I would love to have the chance to walk through the streets, of a world that didn't belong to us, and nature made it very clear once we were gone. I wouldn't want to exploit it, or get on top of the food chain, or be the best at anything here. I would just observe, and survive, in a very simple way. As it used to be. You could say this is all a desire to escape to a place where our human needs, human interests, human responsabilities just don't exist. And that would be a great guess.

Sometimes, I think we all deserve to walk around in a place where we are not needed. Not to feel like less, but to feel like we belongs there. On these empty streets, you don't owe anything an explanation. Neither does nature to you. There's no jobs to work or job applications to fill. There's no family drama or friendship instability. There's no worries about that exam, or how the world is getting slightly duller every passing year. There's just you and this endless maze of overgrown streets, dark gray skies, and sounds of nature.

Take a deep breath. It feels fresh, doesn't it? So much green everywhere has made oxygen levels increase. It feels so different. So... calm. Nostalgic even. Did nature feel this good years ago? Did it stop feeling that way at some point? What... happened?