For a split second, I had been
unable to recognize him. But then, as I drew closer, I realized that I had
known him my entire life. The only thing was that, I hadn’t seen him in a long
while. He was still inside my head but only as a fading memory, as something
that wasn’t real anymore but does not want to die and disappear. I looked at
him and started crying in silence. Suddenly, the past came rushing in like a
flood, filling every corner of my being. Because he was me, only much younger
and way more innocent than I am now.
I hadn’t been able to see myself
like that in a long time and I seemed to have changed. Well, it was expected to
be that way because many years had passed, more than a decade in fact. Not only
had my physical appearance changed a bit but also what I had inside my head. It
was like seeing a mirage in the middle of the desert and just standing away
from it, hoping it won’t vanish. Because if it does then it doesn’t exist
anymore and it fails to become something real, something that I can point to
when trying to explain who I am.
That was one of those damn
questions I wanted to answer so bad back then. I really wanted to know who the
hell I was and how I had become who I was and how I could move forward. The
need to know myself was first and foremost in my mind, so much that it was
shortly after when I started stepping outside of my comfort zone, making it
easier for others to take advantage of me without me actually realizing it. I
was so much younger in mind and body, and so silly and plain. But I guess I was
also brave, beyond my wildest dreams.
I know that because I can see
myself now, what I do and what I’ve done and all of that can only be the result
of someone having the balls to run away from his or her life and just go for
it, whatever “it” is. I never realized the dangers I had faced and that many of
the moments I had forgotten were forgotten for a reason. Because it was then,
and not before, when I realized that life is not so simple and so easy as many
make it seem. Life can be horrible and tiring and just too much for a young
person to handle. Just too much sometimes.
I had no idea before that, of all
the things that awaited me. And I know many think that it’s precisely that what
gives life its meaning. That mystery and the unknown are supposed to be what
living is all about. But they never tell us how frightening it is or how
horrible it can be sometimes. You do things and then you realized you have
crossed several lines created by mankind in order to controls us and you freak
out because you’re not that innocent little boy anymore. You’re a grown man
doing things, left and right, and they could be a deal breaker in life with
many people or even yourself.
A movie was the one that made me
think all about this. A beautiful simple movie rocked my brain and made me
remember moments and facts that I had completely forgotten. Moments populated
with actions and thoughts and people, all of them part of that big dream we all
call the past. And that dream keeps getting larger and larger and I have no
idea if I should keep believing in that dream. Maybe that was the reason why,
all of a sudden, everything exploded inside my head. Maybe I have to make a
choice.
But I don’t want to. Because
choices in this world are never permanent, they are never something you take to
your grave. Choices always get mutated and manipulated, whether you do it or
others do it. Nothing is permanent, so why should I do something that makes
anything seem forever when, I know for a fact, that forever doesn’t really
exist? It’s a thing in our heads that makes us think about our legacy or how
capable we are to survive our own lives but the truth is that we don’t. We die
and that’s it for us. Nothing more.
Watching the “me” from the past
makes me feel very bad, it hurts me very deep. I disappointed him, so I try to
avoid looking directly into his eyes. Because I know that even that figment of
my imagination, of that past we keep recalling, can understand that my life did
not get to be what we always thought it would be. The paths I walked on are not
the ones we always thought we would walk on. And my life is not the life of
someone in a movie, but the life a lonely boy who doesn’t really matter in this
world.
None of us really matter, by the
way. I don’t want to sound as if everything had happened to me and only me. It
is the world that doesn’t give a shit about any of us and that’s why our pasts
or presents or futures are not important. Even if we become the worst person on
the planet tomorrow, nature has an expiration date on all of us, and that will
never change. So the mistakes we’ve done and will do, are never really
important in the grand scheme of things. It’s just that we think too much about
ourselves as a species.
Thinking condemns us every single
day or at least it should. Most people are drones who live their lives from one
side to the other, never really thinking about themselves in a profound way.
They fill their lives with things in order to fill holes that they don’t even
know if they have or not. They have
friendships and relationships and try to be as similar as the norm says,
because if you step out of the line traced by people before you, then you’re on
your own and no one will help you survive. You will have to learn how to
navigate life by yourself and that’s scary, so few people actually go down that
way.
The only thing I can do now is to
wait for my memories to go back to sleep, deep inside my head. They will fall
in a deep slumber because they know I have no use for them right now. But they
will always be there, waiting in the dark for me to need them or for them to
teach me a lesson about myself, again.
As for the movie, it’s something
that happened and now it’s gone. I will probably reflect on it some more but,
as I have no one to talk to about it, the need to have that on my mind will
also die down. And he will go back deep inside my soul and not comeback for a very
long while.
However, I’m sure I’ll see him
again. At least once more before the end.
