After all, we are in love

   The first thing I did, was giving him the biggest hug I could. It was amazing how I could feel his sweater against my face, how I could feel his warmth through the fabric and hear his heart beating beneath it. It was so real I cried, both in the dream and outside of it. I don’t remember how long we stood there, but I do remember I started seeing him in other places in my dreams, just running into him casually while he was saying something nice about me or about what he felt for me. I was over the moon.

 Actually, the full moon loomed above us for most of the dream; it was quite a beautiful sight. It was also nice to be able to touch his hand and hold it out in the open, in front of all the people in campus. Or at least I think it was a campus, it didn’t look anything like the college I had been to years before. It was bigger and with more faces and nice walkways lined with trees. And we would hold hands and just talk about movies and laugh about silly gossips that we had heard about people we knew.

 I have to say that, even then, I knew he wasn’t real. I knew that I was dreaming but it all felt so real that I didn’t mind. I knew what my real life was like and I wanted to have something different for a change and it didn’t mattered if it could only be in a dream. That’s why I tried to remember every single thing, repeating in my head as I went through it, because I wanted to remember every single part of that beautiful dream. I want to memorize his face, because somehow he was more than real to me.

 We even made love and he whispered in my ear how much he wanted to make me feel pleasure. I know, maybe that’s too graphic for some or to little information for others, but I have to say that also felt amazing. I could almost say that I was moaning loudly in my room, in bed, while we were having sex in the dream. We kissed a lot and he really seemed to care for me while we were together. I think that’s what everyone one’s in a partner, someone that really cares for you and who’s not there just to be there.

 Afterwards, we lay there talking a bit. We were tired and sweaty, but we couldn’t prevent our faces from grinning and smiling. We were too happy not to express it with our souls. I remember touching his face, feeling his stubble. He kissed my hand and then hugged me and I felt I could drown in his smell. I still have in my head, and I hope it never goes away. He kissed me like no one has kissed me before and, I have to admit, that maybe no one will ever kiss like that. After all, I lived that vivid dream in a moment but that’s all it was, it was just a dream, as unique as it was.

 When I woke up, I felt really good. I was smiling and I didn’t feel tired or worn down. It was quite the opposite and it has to be said that’s not very common. I usually feel I have just arrived from running a marathon. But not that time. I knew the alarm would go off in any minute, but that wasn’t important. My brain and even my body were still with him, feeling his body against mine and every single feeling he felt towards me rushing between both our beings. No idea if that makes sense at all.

 As I was in the shower and putting on my clothes, I thought of everything I had dreamt of. Some of it was already gone, something that was bound to happen. But most of it was there, for me to think about it over and over again. As I prepared to leave home for work, I realized how silly I would sound to anyone if I told them I had fallen in love with an imaginary person, with someone that only existed in my dreams. They would think that I was going insane or something worse.

 Then again, maybe I am. Maybe it is insane to think that a person that you own mind created is simply not healthy. Even I can say that it sounds crazy but I cannot stop thinking about him and about how he made me feel. In the bus, standing up facing the window and looking at cars and buildings pass, I realize that I don’t really care about what people think or not. He made me happy and it doesn’t matter where it happened or if he was just my mind creating him to make me feel less lonely.

 I couldn’t afford not to care, not to recognize he had been there. After all, I actually thought, for a moment, that maybe my head had not created everything about him. Maybe humans are connected in ways we do not yet understand and we were connected during that time. Maybe he exists, somewhere, and maybe he’s also asking the universe what this all means. I know how all of this sounds but sometimes you just have to believe in something to keep going, in order not to crumble and just give up.

 And I have to believe the love of my life is out there somewhere and that he’s thinking of me too. I would love to know if the face I saw in my dream is the same as the one in reality, but he will surely be thinking the same thing. I’ve found myself hoping he’s not very disappointed, because I’m not exactly a top model or anything like that. But maybe worrying about such a thing is just stupid, because he probably worries too about what he looks like. If he just knew I would love give him a hug and just feel him close to me, maybe that would make his worries disappear.

 Meanwhile, real life is going on as usual. I go to work and I go back home, I sometimes cook and write and do things to pass the time. But every now and then I find myself thinking about him. However, after a while, I just think about how lonely I feel and how nice it would be to have someone close to tell him all my worries and my problems and to laugh and be idiots at the same time. I sometimes think about that and it makes me sad because and over thirty and that hasn’t happened yet.

 I’m the first one to say age doesn’t mean shit but the older you are whenever you finally get to meet that wonderful person, the less time you will have with them. And that scares me a lot, because I want more than a few good years with someone. Shit! After so many years of avoiding any kind of emotional attachment to others, I find myself in a position in which I would be ecstatic if I could feel something for someone else. It would be hard and strange and new, but it could be worth the shot.

 But life doesn’t work by wishing, or I would have met him several years ago, when I was more of an innocent kid that ever before or after. I was someone else and that guy really believed in possibilities. Me, not so much. I know that the dream is just a dream and that, even if there’s a possibility he could be real, that doesn’t mean everything would just work according to my imagination or some kind of plan. You don’t plan life because she will never let you. She’s tougher than that, always.

 Anyways, I want to keep dreaming about him. He made me happy, he made me smile. No one achieved that in a while and I want that here, with me. I know how it sounds and how it looks, but I’m the kind of tired that has to use his imagination to go forward. Reality is not the kindest to me, although it could always be worse. That’s why I dream of him, because even if things really go south, I would have someone nearby to really live with, in every single of the word. And that word means hell of a lot.

 My only hope now is that, somehow, I can see him again in my dreams. I feel like I’ve done that before so, maybe, it could happen again. Maybe this time we could go out dancing or singing before going to his place and have sex. Because that’s something I’m not willing to give up.

 I go to bed tonight thinking… No, I go to bed wishing I will see him again. And then I shed a tear and realize how silly, childish and stupid this is. But I don’t have anything else to hold on to. Real or not, I really need him right now and I just know he will come. After all, we are in love.

My truth

   The moment I came out from the interview, I took out one my cigarettes and lit it up right there, in front of the office building. There was no one there doing the same thing, so of course people looked at me as if I was the strangest thing they had ever done, almost as if they had never even seen a human smoking in their lives. Maybe it was my clothes or the way I was standing up or maybe the fact that it was obvious I didn’t belong there. Maybe they were very good at looking through people and knowing their truth.

 I didn’t stay long to figure it out. With my cig on my mouth, I walked towards the bus stop. I didn’t really want to go back home so soon, so I wasn’t precisely running to grab the bus. I stood a bit far from the bus stop in order to finish the cigarette, as I thought of the questions they had asked me and the answers I had given. My truth right then and there was that I wanted to scream, to run away and just put my head inside a hole in the ground. I was frustrated and tired and just fed up with everything around me.

 My bus came in too fast, so I had to put off my cigarette. Luckily, the bus was not as filled up as it could have been. I was a bit pissed off that I had to pay for it, only because I knew going to that stupid interview had been a waste of time. The same thing had happened that year, once and again and again and again. Sometimes it was in places close to my home but I mostly had to travel by bus in order to just feel like an imbecile once I got to the actual interview. I had to sit there and pretend I knew shit about shit.

 Somehow, I had learned to pretend and lie in many parts of my life, but never in situations like interviews. Actually, more than not knowing how to do it, I think it was something related to not having the same mindset than the people doing the interview. I knew I wasn’t one of them. And I don’t mean it like saying I’m better or something like that. I’m certainly not better. But the point is we weren’t understanding each other because we were two very different types of people who could never connect at any level.

 That happened to me in every interview, from the moment I came out of college until today, six years later. Six years and I have never had a steady job because people won’t hire me. Maybe it’s lack of enthusiasm or maybe it’s just that I don’t have any skills or knowledge that can be applied in a “useful” job. And I live in a country were jobs are a precious thing, not really offered in every corner. And yet, some people get them and stay in them for several years or maybe all of their lives. And here I am, over thirty now, jobless and still wondering if I will ever be able to live by myself.

 As I step down the bus, a couple of blocks away from my house, I decide to take my ass to the nearest park. I have no need to hear my mother’s questions about the interview or feel how my dad looks at me knowing that I’m a complete and utter failure. No, I need to mix it up a little bit and maybe the park has exactly what I need. If I was a pothead, I would consider smoking there for a while but I cannot even have an interesting hobby like that one. I’m very boring and just sit there by myself.

 There are many guys walking dogs and old ladies also doing the same thing. I get obsessed for a while with people picking up their dogs businesses. Then, I remember why I’m there and my world just crumbles again. I feel the need to cry but I really don’t want to. I’m tired of having done that so many times in the past. It’s like I’m dried up, just too damn tired to shed one more tear into this ungrateful fucking world. I’d rather just stay put and think about something else, escape from everything once again.

 Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. Why doesn’t that faggot just commit to something and start changing his ways? Why doesn’t he just become whatever it is that people are looking for in a worker? I mean, that’s what people do: they pretend to be this superhuman in order to be considered for anything from a job to a damn relationship. Fuck, even people that want to fuck each other lie about many things in order to get laid. So what’s up with this guy? Why doesn’t he just do what everybody else does and shut up?

 Well, I can’t. I physically can’t. I cannot pretend forever, I cannot work in something I despise or don’t even have an interest in. Of course I don’t have that luxury, to like what I work in. I don’t and I know that. But even in that case I just feel like I have no other option but being this sack of gas and shit that biology turned me into. I cannot just acquire all of those things that people have because it’s a case of you have it or you don’t. At least it is for me, from my point of view.

 Of course, you people are just thinking: “Who the fuck does this guy think he is? Why doesn’t he just do something, like all the rest of us do?” And the real answer to that is that I don’t have a fucking clue why I don’t do that, why I don’t just turn into someone else and become this being that everyone wants to be connected with. But I can’t. I have failed as a human male, I know that. And I’m trying to reconcile with that in a world that doesn’t give a fuck about individuals, where the group is always much more important than anything you might be feeling in your little weak head.

 When I realize it, it’s almost completely dark. The lamps on the park illuminate everything in the creepiest way and it does remind me that this city is filled with rapists, murderers, robbers and, the worst part, stupid fuckers. So I stand up and walk a few blocks towards home. I prepare in my mind phrases to tell my mother and my father. As I enter the building and press the elevator button, the sense of dread enters my soul once again. I feel awful, like crying once again, but I just don’t do it. What good will that make?

 I enter home and, as predicted, she asks me about how it went and my father looks at me over his glasses. I just say whatever thing it was that I prepared and then excuse myself because I really want to pee. And it’s true, but I also want to run away from there because I have no need to watch them look at me. I feel parents can really see through their children, even if they decide to buy the lies you tell them as their sons and daughters. Parents always know, in one way or the other, and that has always scared me.

 I enter the bathroom, close the door and pull out my penis. As I pee, I look myself at the mirror and see someone I don’t completely like. It’s not only his looks that I have always hated, but also the fact that he cannot be the person that everyone wants him to me, that he needs to be in order to survive this motherfucking world. Look at him, staring back at me with those depressing little eyes and that fucking brain that’s only filled with garbage. I can say I sometimes despise him to death.

 And his looks. He cannot even get anyone to fuck him and there is no doubt why. Never mind the tiny dick, just look at his face. He looks sick and oily, just disgusting. He finishes peeing, washes his hands in seconds and leaves. I enter my room and just fall on my bed. Again, I want to cry and scream and yell and hit and kick. But I can’t. I know nothing of the sorts will help me be whoever it is I’m supposed to be. It just won’t and I don’t know what to do next, when to just quit for good. It seems like the obvious choice.

 How many times can I stand being rejected for a job interview? For how long can I wait until I understand that no one will ever hire me to do anything? Am I resistant enough to last like this forever? Should I even keep doing that now, that I know the reality of who I am and my possibilities?

 I fall asleep and wake up in the middle of night. My mother apparently understood it all, because she didn’t wake me up or nothing. It’s four in the morning and my thoughts race through my head. I’m trying to stay in control, but sometimes it is taken from you and there’s nothing you can do about it.

Survival

   Fire blurred my vision every single time I leaned over my right leg to run. It hurt like nothing else had ever hurt me, but I had no choice. Running required me to be agile, not minding what was happening with the rest of my body. Those legs that had carried me around all my life had to work at the top of their game, never minding anything else. I felt the taste of iron in my mouth and my mind seemed to leave my body for a couple of moments, but somehow I moved on through the night, like a wraith between rocks and chopped trees.

 When light finally broke the darkness of the night, there was not much to look at anyway. The fields had been almost carbonized and smoke filled every single corner of the once green and lush environment. I stopped and tried to hear the world around me. My ears were buzzing and my head was turning like crazy but I tried anyway but I couldn’t hear a thing. It was then when I noticed that my leg was in a horrible state, a large part opened and spilling blood all over. However, the pain was not as bad as it was supposed to be.

 I tasted iron again and realized I had bitten my tongue while running. There was blood on my head too but I didn’t touch myself to know where it was coming from. It was urgent to find a place to get the proper help I need because, after all that had happened, I was still alive. They had sent troops after me, I had been strapped to a torture table for days and yet there I was, in the middle of a field that they had apparently abandoned. I started walking once more, trying to find a proper exit to that horrible place.

 I might have wondered through the smoke for several hours. I knew it was still day because there was light but it was very hard to see where the Sun was exactly. I tried to identify it a couple of times but it was absolutely useless. So I moved on, walking through the scorched plains, hoping to find a place to rest for a while. I have to confess I never thought of anyone else during that time, I had only myself in mind. What would I be good for if I died? The only way to help others was if I made it alive to the other side.

 When light began to wane, I found the first untouched trees that I had seen in several days, maybe more. I had no idea how much time had passed since everything had started. But there they were, smelling like smoke, with the tips of their leaves burned, but alive nevertheless. I walked into the forest, with a frankly good mood. No one would enter the forest to only look for me. There was a lot more to do in the world than to go after one person that got away. Maybe they thought nature, or what remained of it, would finish the job and make my bones be food for the ground.

 In the dark, I eventually found something of use. It was a small village, made of about a dozen little houses. It looked like one of those places were people gather when they expect to be mining for something, one of those temporal towns that were built back in the day, when retrieving the remaining minerals was of outmost importance for the world. Now, all those miners and their families worked in the big factories in the cities. The old villages had been left to rot under the sun and the rain and everything else.

 Plants had overrun the place, flowers growing everywhere. The smoke around there was much less dense. I was able to breathe a little bit easier. I walked around and eventually found the little hut that had worked as the doctor’s office. Maybe they hadn’t been able to attract a proper doctor to that remote place, only a nurse or maybe someone that came once every two or three weeks to help as much as they could. As I expected, there wasn’t a lot to use around there but almost nothing was better than nothing at all.

 I cured my wounds with whatever there was around and I was lucky enough to discover a linen closet filled with clean sheets and other fabrics. I cut a large one in order to use as bandages for my wounds. My body felt a little better, especially when I lay down in a cot. There was only the light of the moon, which happened to be almost getting to its fullest state. The beautiful pearl color of its surface, visible past the sheet of smoke, made me think of the past, of simpler times that I had been lucky enough to live.

 I fell asleep, dreaming about things that I remembered but mostly about things I had no idea how to understand. It was obvious that I had begun to forget things. Their attempts to make me less of a human had actually worked, as I didn’t feel like my old self anymore. My dream did not make any sense and everyone in it, or most of them at least, felt as a fabrication of my mind or maybe even someone else’s. It was so disturbing, that I woke up very suddenly, sweating profusely and damning my humanity.

 I realized I had slept much more than I had thought. It was morning already and the sound of birds reached me. For a moment, it seemed very normal. But then I realized there was no way. The plain had been destroyed or at least most of it. It was improbable that wildlife would have found a way to survive the destruction of the war and all other things that had happened. I stood up and went running outside, realizing I was not dreaming at all. There was a bird singing somewhere close, and I wanted to see it. I wanted to remember what a bird looked like, one that was real.

 I walked, slowly, out of the smoky cloud that had covered me for hours, maybe even more time. I seemed to be walking on the edge of the forest. The bird was chirping away, probably flying away slowly. I eventually arrived to a place where the trees began to be shorter and there were more rocks and reddish soil. It was then when I saw the little bird making the noise. It was small, brown in color and a little bit puffy. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was happy and talented and free. That was the most important: free.

 I wanted to go closer, to touch him, at least for a moment. But another sound cut me off from desire. The bird seemed to notice it too because it suddenly stopped singing. It stayed on its branch, silently staring right into a group of trees. Then, suddenly and very fast, a bullet rushed through the air and blew up the bird into oblivion. I saw its feathers fall slowly to the ground. I saw beauty being destroyed just because it was there. I felt enraged but also very much confused. I really didn’t like that at all.

 A group of two men and a woman came from the trees. I had walked back a bit just before, hiding behind the thickest tree I had been able to find. I trembled when I realized who they were: Ravagers. They were mercenaries that captured rebels in order to surrender them in exchange for money or food. Sometimes even more ammo for their guns. They didn’t care at all for the rights of others to live or to think differently. That was all done a long time ago. They had sold their souls for a cheap price.

 The woman grabbed the bird from the ground and did something I only heard, because I couldn’t make myself watch any of it. I only heard the crackling of bones and then laughter. I knew of their sadistic ways, identical to those of the people in power. There was no real difference between them. They had all been complacent in what had happened in the country. In the world, even. I only waited for them to go and they eventually did, walking back into the trees, their voices unable to hurt my ears anymore.

 When I felt better, I decided to go back to the village and grab everything I could find that might be useful. I used an old rag to make a sort of bag and put everything I could inside. I put that ball of stuff almost at the end of a thick stick I had found in the forest, getting ready for my next move.

 That night, I decided to walk in the opposite direction of everything that I had seen the day before. They had been the ones to almost kill me. My legs and feet walked on, hoping to move away from everything that had happened. Nevertheless, deep down, I knew that wasn’t at all possible.