Shall I begin, in a rare stream of consciousness, to quickly begin to describe my creation and demise?

It was cold, and my whole being felt shocked by an impact that did little to provide the comfort I once felt. In a haze I searched for warmth, and something to quench the feeling I never felt before. I was later told it was thirst, but at that time I just searched for something that would ground me, and clear my head. When I found it I burrowed my way in, wishing that the cold would disappear, but the moistness around me kept the chill at a steady pace, warding away brief moments of pleasure. I soon figured out the cycle, and enjoyed the brief moments of heat before I was plunged back into darkness and cold.

I learned, then, what sunlight meant. It peaked through hazy moments of recollection, and the joy filled me enough to cast away the covers that kept me in a haze; I remember stretching for the happiness that beamed down upon me. But I was impatient, and it hurt every time the brightness left. Sometimes it would come back right away, and sometimes I wouldn’t see it for days. I learned to stand, and began finding ways to distract myself until the bright came back. Creatures, and sounds, filled the world around me as blurs melted into solid objects, and solid objects became friends, and some days I forgot to notice the brightness.

With each passing moment, I became aware of movement. I could feel movement around me, unsure if it was me or the world I had found myself within, but I felt it. I was suddenly further away the creatures and the objects around me, but I felt the movement. It was exhilarating, and I smiled at the brightness as it shined above me. The brightness and I became friends, and I mourned it when it left. But I knew it would return, and I found myself closer and closer to it with each of its passings.

New creatures, and new movements arrived suddenly and I began to feel like I didn’t need the brightness. At times it shunned me, despite my reach for it, so I began to move out instead of up, and started to touch a world that was both harsh and soft. Laughter punctuated moments of peace, and rumblings that shook the world gave way to fear and unease, but it was an existence I had settled into and I felt wholly at home. But there were times when I would look up to the brightness, and let the warmth spread across me and I felt small again. I let those moments cradle me, unwilling to let capricious thoughts to pull me away from the lull of safety and warmth.

Moments passed in a flurry that I forgot how to count them in anything other than new faces, and old ones, never once acknowledging the same change within myself. Until the final moments, when being aware became knowing, and the heights in which I once achieved became the distance in which I started. The chill returned, a vague memory I had thought I had forgotten, becoming an unwanted friend. I press myself into it, searching for the thirst I once had, but now is gone with the faces I once knew that have become the faces of the simply new. The brightness comes one last time, warming me like the old friend it had always been, even when I turned away from it. It came, and for the first time I find myself leaving it behind with a smile on my face.

Prompt #10: Write about the growth cycle of the tree and relate it to the human experience.