April: We quit church for good shortly before our daughter was born.
May: We had a daughter.
I want to quit my job.
My northern friend deleted his blog.
I've been thinking about Alex Sparks.
I've started writing on a notebook all the things I should talk about but can't (because she won't listen, or because talking seems to make things worse when it shouldn't, or whatever).
December: My son and my daughter had to spend a week in the hospital because of lack of oxygen in their blood caused by a virus. My dad didn't give a fuck. It is evident that he's having an affair (keep in mind that he is a radical fundamentalist christian pastor and he does it with no regrets and keeping up his bullshit ministry like he's a king).
2022
I've been trying to get therapy for a while but I haven't found a place yet.
Late February: My sister, my brother and I confronted my dad about his affair. He doesn't give a flying fuck. He basically brushed us off and has carried on with his bullshit. He is extremely narcissist. He is fucking mad.
I don't talk to my dad. I don't want to see him.
June: I've started going to therapy
August: Where the fuck did my twenties go?
September: My son has started school.
December: We traveled to south-eastern France to spend the Christmas holidays. It's the first time ever we don't see our close relatives on such a season.
I grew up in a conservative fundamentalist-Christian household. Cursing and swearing were absolutely forbidden. I distinctly remember the first time I cussed. I was 4 years old. I was in the playground of my kindergarten school. I saw two kids racing, and I uttered something along the lines of: “Damn! They are running fast!” (I didn’t say it in English). I don’t remember feeling bad about it. No regrets to this day, despite it being my naughty little secret. It didn’t become something recurrent. In fact, at the public school I attended, I was counted among the well-mannered kids.
When I became a teenager, my inner life got much troubling because I became aware of the two parallel worlds I was living in. On the one hand, there was the one my family abided. It was a small world. It was coherent. It had a fixed cosmovision and a defined set of values and beliefs. It had specific rituals that gave it an ongoing steady rhythm. It had a particular vocabulary, and it was informed by a concrete compilation of stories and characters. It had its heroes and enemies. It had its own physical spaces too, and it was full of rules and taboos. From the outside, it appeared to be seamless and stable. But it reeked of hypocrisy all around.
On the other hand, there was the real world, with its messiness, with its cacophony of opinions and colliding narratives. It was a fluid and expansive world full of alleged evil, but also of endless possibilities and color, limited only by the extent of my imagination.
And so the stage was set for my rebellious adolescence.
To cope with the tension and contradictions between these two worlds, along with the default hardships of those years, I found shelter in my friends, my music, skateboarding & sports. I also started writing then and using English more than ever while living in Spain. You see, growing up there, not many people around me spoke English. I was among the lucky few that could call it my second language, so I used it as my private vehicle of expression in my notebooks. (At least when I did not travel back to the States, then it was the other way around.) It was there and then where I started releasing my anger, distress, and anxiety through words. As English was my second language, I could distance myself from the things I wrote while simultaneously letting go of all the negative energy I held within.
Thus unlike that first time, when I was an infant, I have never cussed in any other language but English, and it has worked to this day as much as it could. But lately, I have been feeling self-conscious. I have interacted with some of the people that have read my last pages. They have been kind, and they have not brought it up. But I have noticed that on their sites, they do not use the rough language that I sometimes use. And although I am not going to stop because it helps me keep my sanity, I felt the need to offer an explanation out of my respect for them.
I should not remember the first time I cussed. The fact that I do shows a glimpse of the absurd repression I had to endure in my context. And I am not alone in this. I have observed that my brother also swears exclusively in English. I now know how blessed I was to set my feet in the real world so early on. Some of my childhood friends were caged in the closed-minded and reactionary un-Jesus-like institutional fake-church setting until they reached adulthood. Among them, some might be stuck in it forever.
Not everything that Christian fundamentalism gave me was wrong or harmful, but I think that no one should live through its bullshit to gain the good that it has to offer. It does not compensate. It is totally unbalanced.
Brief Considerations on Writing Down Your Own Timeline (After a Long Prologue)
The coronavirus hit. Lockdown was decreed. I’ve been stuck inside for more than a couple of months now. I’ve been immersed in way more silence and for way longer periods than I’ve been for a while (perhaps years). Before you know it, you are all caught up watching old photographs and reading old blog posts, messages, postcards, and letters. And suddenly you start wondering… “What the fuck have I done with my life?” As well as “Where the fuck did everybody go?” You know how it goes. I guess getting all nostalgic and melancholic in these circumstances is natural. I’ve responded to these feelings coming back to writing my personal thoughts to try to get it all out. By doing so I’ve noticed there’s way more shit down there that I’ve been carrying around for god-knows-how-long than I had imagined or ever acknowledged. Because that’s what we do: let the shit pile up, let the dust of time cover it up and hide it from sight, just ignore it and never deal with it. But its weight is there, and it never goes away. We drag it with us wherever we go, in the back of our minds, and it haunts us in our restless sleep when we sleep at all.
In February I hit 10 years on tumblr. I didn’t give it a second thought. I’m not sure if I even considered it, to be honest. Until now, of course. That date is important for me because that year was fundamental in my personal development. In 2010, after starting my tumblr, I graduated from high school, I turned 18, I officially started dating B (with whom I got married 6 years later) and I started university. Thus 2020, for me, marks 10 years of adult life.
When a few weeks ago this consideration struck me, I began writing madly. At first, my words didn’t make much sense. When the current situation stabilized into this weird new “normal” (when I finally assumed that I wasn’t going back to my workplace, the classes for the master’s degree would all be online till the end of the semester, and my wife had lost her job until further notice) I managed to calm down and reflect. I organized my written chatter into different texts, and I decided to turn them into a discourse that was actually readable and that I could publish here. I wanted to do so after figuring how beneficial this blog has turned out to be, and how much I regret not having updated it more.
This act of organizing my recent writings is what brought me to pin down my own timeline. At first, I started it in a notebook. I wrote each year on a column set to the left, leaving some generous space between each one, and to its right, I penned down all the events that I considered relevant. When I finished, I transcribed it to a draft blog post and left it there for a couple of days. Then I read it and I went through my personal archive systematically, comparing what I had kept with what I had written on my timeline. When I did, I noticed several things. Firstly, I pondered all the events that I had left out which had seemed central when they took place. I felt guilty for some of them, in some cases to the point of actually adding them in. I also became aware that there were others that I had included in the first place for precisely that reason, and if I were to be honest with myself, I should omit them. In the end, I decided to write them all down and just distinguish them with different colors so I could have a clearer picture. (Although I had to stop, and I doubt I’ll be able to finish it. It makes me way more emotional than I can bear.) Secondly, and in contrast, I considered how some events (and people) that had seemed to come and go without glories or shame, had turned out to be crucial. There were also words and movies, as well as other people’s lives and experiences (which weren’t mine at all) that shaped me beyond what I can grasp. Thirdly, I saw these long stretches of time that seemed wasted, and they all orbited around my personal investment in the religious circle I should have abandoned way earlier. From 2010 to late 2014 I spent too many weekends in church youth group-related activities, but I don’t keep any distinct memories of almost none of it. What I do remember took place in its context, but it wasn’t part of it (such as a specific conversation, a gesture, or a long-departed friend). And what it does belong is all bad (like the hypocrisies, and the pain of the innocent), and it’s what finally opened my eyes and pushed me to move on (thank god). Finally, there was the euphoria that preceded the numb years. The euphoria came with the culmination of the story that I’d been raised to believe I should embody: college graduation, finding a job, getting married. The long-awaited happy ending. (I finally ticked all the goddamn boxes.) Just that it wasn’t the end, was it? So then came the breakdown. December of 2016. Crying and shaking uncontrollably in the car. And after that, the numb years, leading all the way up to my wife’s pregnancy.
In the numb years, I shut down my awareness. My perception of the world became grey and seamless. I felt dragged by the indifferent currents of life. I kept going like an automat. I lost my spark.
My son’s birth resurrected me. But after crossing through this valley of desolation I still don’t know how to move. I’m trying to rebuild myself and redefine my self-agency and autonomy. However, I’m full of fear and insecurity, despite the fact that anxiety doesn’t define me as much anymore. I used to think that I was supposed to live my life. Nowadays I entertain the thought that life is rather happening to me, and I try to receive it with open arms no matter what it throws my way. Radical acceptance is how I call this embracing disposition of the soul I want to constantly abide in.
But in the end, whatever narrative this timeline reveals to me, I now know that it’s just that: an artificially constructed tale that my craving for meaning, certainty, and satisfaction has pushed me to make up in the aftermath of events. Never mind how I look at it, it all brings me to Just Here, This Moment. This realization has laid my feet on solid ground and it has brought back the glimpse of peace, perfection, and cosmic belonging that I’d lost. Somehow, “I was drowning, but now I’m swimming”.
“This is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it”.
Yesterday I got together with my mountain friends to have a barbecue at my brother's house. They came with their partners, except G, because his girlfriend is in the islands with her family. S was the chef. We hugged and kissed each other despite the social distancing recommendations. We talked about life, and we shared memories of our many adventures while my boy played around, we had our meal and drunk soda and beer. Later came the ice cream and the coffee. J and S are having babies in July and September, respectively, so their wifes spent their time talking with mine and asking her lots of questions. A new generation is blooming. After seeing my family on Monday, as I mentioned, this has been our first meeting with friends after the lockdown's strictest phase.
After the coffee, we left ladies chatting in the garden, and the 6 of us went to check the trail behind the house. There isn't a trail anymore because nobody has walked through it in a very long time. The stormy weather has been harsh on the terrain this spring, plus the bushes and the brambles have grown a lot. The trail was supposed to descend zigzagging the cliff, leading to the creek at the bottom of the valley. But now there's only the cliff and some fragments of the trail. We managed to reach the creek, and we explored its surroundings. The last time my brother had gone down there was before the storms. He told us that it looked wrecked and way wilder than before. The creek was quite full, and we decided it would be fun to cross it. We had to gather lots of logs to build some sort of bridge. In the end, we had to jump using a long and robust stick as a pole vault. We didn't make it out completely dry, even though we tried. We found another forgotten trail at the other side of the creek, which led us back up to the backyard of the house. We ended up all sweaty and scratched. It was so much fun. For the while that our tiny expedition lasted, we became kids all over again. Nothing mattered, just the here and now. The sky was cloudless, and the sun was shinning bright. Sheer joy filled our beings. Amid experiences like these, we are not just friends. We are brothers, and everything is alright, in perfect peace and harmony.
Yesterday I did write a little. I also read. But reading didn't help because I'm into 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being'. So that's that. Still, I cannot stop. It's a beautiful novel, and it speaks deeply into my soul. We also had lunch at my parents' house with my siblings and their partners. It was the first time we got together in two months. The lockdown and social distancing measures are finally starting to lessen in this region. It was nice. Berna answered my text message too. He basically said that everything is okay.
And last night I had a weird nightmare-ish dream. I was in a computer classroom at uni. The classroom was full, and I was sitting in the front row. I had the professor's desk to my left. I saw a messenger app I used to use when I was a teenager on the desktop screen of my computer, and I logged in. Then, I saw a chatroom I had with 3 friends from high school. We used that chatroom to make jokes while we were in the Latin class. We had lots of fun. It was really hard to chat in class and repress our laughter to not get caught. You see, it was only the 4 of us in that class. For some reason that escapes me, I knew that at least 2 of those 3 friends were in that computer classroom with me, so I couldn't help myself and I started writing in that chatroom a somewhat disrespectful but hilarious rhyme about the professor. I did it for good old times' sake, even though I didn't know if they would log in like me. Then, the professor turned on the screen projector, and to my surprise, the computer that was connected to it was mine instead of his, so everybody saw the stupid rhyme that I was writing. Right when I was beginning to drown in embarrassment, I woke up.
I had a good conversation with my wife while we were having breakfast and our baby was playing. We talked about the ego, loneliness, and about how people invest their identities on their beliefs, and how this blinds their ability to be critical and seek the truth. It helped me to unload my angst quite a bit. Last Wednesday I delivered the last activity of the master's degree. It was my last activity ever. I'll now just have to pass two final exams and do the final thesis. I'll start with the thesis in September. The exams will be in a couple of weeks. I should be studying, but I wrote this instead. I'm going to take a shower and shave now. It's Tuesday but it feels like a weekend.
If I allow my head to continue spinning like this, I’ll get stuck in places where I don’t want to be.
As I said in the Interlude, I’ve been writing a lot lately to make sense of things and find myself again (al least sort of). I won’t be able to finish what I started unless I do calm the fuck down. And *I need* to finish what I’ve started. Otherwise I won’t be able to move on.
But I also have to be honest with myself. I can’t stop thinking of him.
But today I woke up so sad. I shouldn’t have sent Berna that text message. I should have left it in god’s hands with my reply (my real reply) to his last email, the one he send me in September of 2016. I tried to delete the text message when I woke up this morning, but it was too late. I have no way of knowing if he’s seen it or read it. What the hell was I thinking? I don’t want to lose him. They say you only choose your friends (enemies too, though not always, and fuck that). Well, he is (and I guess always has been) the only one I’m not able to let go of willingly. I don’t have any friends left this year. (By friends I mean people who I’m unable to stop thinking about and with whom I’ll bring up the real shit without being careful). But the truth is I only want *him*. I wish he was family. I see him as such. I wish he saw me as such too. (And I know it’s not fair for me to complain because I have a partner and a son and we are happy together, but god I love him so much). I miss him so, so much. And I’m such an asshole, such a horrible friend. I let him down. My mind keeps telling me that I’m a selfish motherfucker and that it doesn’t matter how precise and reasonable the motives, the circumstances, and its explanations might be. They’ll never come up higher than a bunch of self-righteous excuses. I’m so weak. Maybe he doesn’t need me. Maybe he never has. But god I love him so much. I just hope he is fine. Better than ever. Happy. I wish I could hug him right now. I wish he forgives me.
Our baby was born in late October 2018. A boy was given unto us. We named him Light of God. (That’s the literal meaning of his name.) His birth was the most powerful and mystical experience I’ve ever lived. (His birth was a natural one. My wife is amazing.) The gift of parenthood has obviously been lifechanging; one of those very few events that constitute a before-after landmark in the path of life. In fact, it’s been the tallest one so far.
However, on the outside (not counting what caring for my own baby has implied, which is no small deal) my life hasn’t changed much since. I still have the same job at the same place (although I got joyfully promoted that year); I still attend (more sporadically than often) the Sunday services of the same local church; I still train Karate every week; I’m still pursuing the same shitty Master’s degree; I still skateboard. Definitely, one would have to pay close attention (or be my actual friend) to notice hints pointing at my inner shift, unless they asked me directly for my thoughts (which almost no one does). The core of my soul is the same it’s always been, but my change of perspective has been radical; and my transformation, thorough.
Now that everybody is stuck inside because of the coronavirus outbreak and I haven’t got too many responsibilities to tend to, I’ve been reflecting and writing it down. What I’ve written so far is disorganized and messy, but I intend to get at least some of it right and publish it here.
The End of the Mountain Story and a General Extra Update
I wrote this on the last day of this past July. I’m publishing it more than a month and a half later.
First of all I would like to share with you the end of the last story I published here.
I did go to the mountains by myself despite the bad weather report.
When I arrived at the parking area it was around early afternoon. I could tell by looking at the sky that I would get rain for sure. But I could also guess that the sky would hold at least until nightfall. So I decided to climb up the mountain until 7pm. Then I would stop wherever I was and I would plant my tent. And that’s exactly what I did. I reached the altitude of about 2.500 meters above sea level. I could feel the warmth of the sun and see its brightness until approximately 18:40, when the sky got completely covered in dark clouds.
Shortly after I planted my tent it started to rain intermittently. I took it as a chance to meditate and consider the path of my life. I had dinner and then I wrote on a notebook until I decided to go to sleep.
The storm woke me up in the middle of the night. I checked my watch and saw it was 3:10am. It wasn’t cold at all. It was raining a lot and I could feel the explosions of thunder in my chest as it echoed through the mountains. Lightning brightened up the world for breathtaking seconds with its blasts.
I would lie if I told you I wasn’t scared. But I also state the truth when I say that my peace dwelled in my spirit as I felt suspended in time and space, somewhat ecstatic.
I braced myself and somehow felt asleep again.
I woke up not long after 5:30am. The storm was gone, but it still was raining, though softly.
I hurried myself up, packed everything and started heading back down towards the car. I didn’t want to be caught up by the storm.
It stopped raining for a while, but when I reached the car it started again and way more intensely than before. I let go of all my gear, set it in the trunk, I sat behind the steering wheel and slept for about one hour and a half.
When I woke up it was close to 9:30am and it was still raining. I ate something and then I started the engine and headed to a farmhouse an hour and twenty minutes drive away. There I got together with my wife and her friends. My wife’s friends’ husbands were also there. We managed to visit the farm despite the rain and we had a delicious lunch there together. We went back home in the afternoon.
Now I should give you an update on my life. Because my last written update that made sense for that matter was published almost 9 months ago. Let’s go for it.
I haven’t finished my Master’s degree. I’ve decided to take it easy and take two or three more years to get done with it. I’m sick of it. I’ve come to the point where I’m just doing it for the diploma. And I’d rather get it in 2 or 3 years’ time than this year but having to waste every single afternoon including some in the weekends.
As I write this I’m on my last day of a one-month internship in a regional public archive. And to be honest it’s been very boring and I haven’t learn’t much at all. At least the wage was alright, considering how internships go these days.
In order to enrol to this internship I had to put my job on hold. This month of August I’ll get my vacations and on September I’ll get back to work. The school’s principle called me last week and asked me if I’d like to teach three more classes every week. It’s the second-graders. I said yes. I still have in mind changing my job. I’ve taken some steps in that direction, but I haven’t set myself any deadlines or even come up with a specific plan to do it.
My wife did leave her job and so far she’s been in two different new ones. She hated the first one, so she was there only for a month. The one she has now she certainly enjoys.
But she doesn’t go to work anymore, because she’s pregnant. Our baby is due in November.
The weather prediction has changed for the worse and I don’t know what to do. It looks like it is going to rain. If it was exclusively up to me I would definitely go. But I don’t want to worry anybody. I don’t want to hurt my loved ones. And making them worry, becoming a burden for them, is hurting them. Sometimes it is worth it to pursue things that’ll make your loved ones worry, but I’m not sure if this one is one of those occasions.
Maybe I should just go to spend the night in the wilderness and limit myself to wandering around near the car instead of climbing the mountain.
My wife is leaving for the weekend with a couple of friends. It’ll be a girls trip. They’ve been planing it for a while, but it’s been hard for them to find a date to go because one of them who happens to be my cousin has to work many weekends because she is a nurse.
Given the fact that she was leaving I was going to go with my workmates to a homemade beer fest in a nearby town, but this week most of them said they couldn’t come, and thus I started feeling like I didn’t want to go anymore. Also, on Monday or Tuesday I watched a mini documentary about a ski guide who is 51 years old and lives in a tiny one-space cabin in the mountains and is the embodiment of the forever young spirit.
Last weekend I went to a friend’s 30th birthday party and there I met with another friend who has an awesome volkswagen van with whom I went on an expedition to the Pyrenees about two years ago and, among other stuff, we talked about adventure.
As the beer fest plan started to crumble, an image of the mountains popped into my mind. I messaged and called my mountaineering friends, but apparently no one could join me. So I decided to go alone.
Yesterday I posted a text I’d written about my struggles with depression. This depression I’m struggling with is strange. It is as if my life is divided in two sections. One of them is really happy, amazing, wonderful and it has to do with family. While the other one is… Well; what I wrote basically; and it has to do with the pressure of the system (call it Babylon if you will). This ambivalence is what distorts me the most.This depression –I hadn’t identified it as it is until recently– has had its worst effects on my identity. I need to find myself. And to do it I need silence to listen to my heart.
I’m going to go to a mountain where I’ve already been three times although I’ve only summited it once. I’ve also climbed five other nearby peaks, so I know the area fairly well. It is about an hour-drive away from where my wife and her friends will be staying. When I come back down I want to go with them so we can go back home together.
She doesn’t like me going alone, specially because it will be my first time. But she let me convince her. She knows I need it and she knows it will be good for my soul. I promised her I’ll stay safe.
I wanted to record video and make a short film documenting my experience because I’ve learnt to edit quite decently at work these past months. But I couldn’t get myself a video-camera and my smartphone is still an iPhone 4. So I’ll take photos and write it down instead. I might organize it in an album and publish it somewhere in the internet.
Hello, I’m here. I’m still here. I’ve been silent. No one is listening. Or is it? I’ve been scared. I try not to be. I’m depressed. I don’t know how to get out of this hole. I’m not sure what put me here. It’s dark. I long for change. But I need help. Life is probably not as dramatic as my words make it sound, but it hurts a lot. I don’t know how to manage my feelings. I know that feelings are not meant to be managed. What needs to be managed is my reaction to those feelings. But I don’t know how to feel them, and thus I don’t know how to manage my reactions to them. I’m lost. That’s also a word that I(my inner voice) use(s) to describe my current state. Do I need therapy? Maybe I only need to write, even if no one is listening right now or might not listen for a long time. I hate the system. Fuck it. Fuck the system. What do I want? I don’t know. Do I have to want anything? I’ve sincerely got to believe this truth: everything is going to be fine. In fact, everything is fine right now. It is my perception of life what is distorted. I don’t need any of the things that unleash my anxieties and paranoias. “You are not things. Things don’t make you who you are. I’m alive. I’m a channel of love. The worst case scenario is not that bad. I can totally endure it. And, however, it is unlikely for things to go so wrong. I have to believe in myself. I have to let go. It is not my call to be in control of the uncertain. Worry is a misuse of imagination. Worry is a misuse of imagination. Worry is a misuse of imagination. I must stop misusing my imagination for good. I have to start using my mind like a sharp weapon. I have to embrace the universe. I have to let God embrace me. I need to get my voice back.
The Master’s degree is fucking bullshit. The title, no doubt, can get me a job; but the great majority of classes are a total waste of time. This is why I’m skipping a bunch of them lately. I’m not sure if I’m willing to push it hard enough to get it this school-year. I’d rather take it easy and set aside more time to do what I really like.
My job is alright. On September I got another promotion and this month they made me an indefinite contract. Still, I think it would be good for me if I left. I might try to find something else in 2018.
My wife also wants to leave her job and look for something else. She graduated from university with a degree in Pedagogy in September. I’m so proud of her. She’s considering to enrol in a Master’s degree or sign up for a Social Education degree.
We’re already thinking about having a baby. We’d like for her or him to be born in 2019. It isn’t decided yet though. We’re not working on it yet.
Writing is glamorous. I should put my thoughts into text more often. It’s also refreshing for my emotional health’s sake.
Haven’t I told you yet that Captain Fantastic (2016) is my favourite movie? I’ve watched it 4 times already. Also boardgames is my new hobby since like the beginning of this year.
I promised myself I would write and publish something here before the end of the month. Today it is its last day, so I’m running out of time. I don’t know exactly why I didn’t do it or start it earlier, but I can grasp at least some of the edges of the reason. I’m scared of looking directly into the mirror. I’ve been feeling so insecure that I couldn’t even talk to myself.
My grandpa died today. The funeral will be tomorrow.
I’m alright. I haven’t shed a tear and I don’t think I will. All my family and the people who knew him that were aware of his health condition have been waiting for the news of the end of his life on Earth for the last couple of years.
The weather is really nice. The sun is shining bright and the air is pure because of the storm that came and passed two nights ago, cleansing the environment. Today’s been a good day for him to die. I think he hasn’t suffered. Everybody was ready for this. We’d already assumed it; even his wife, my grandma.
His death is sadder because of my extended family’s situation rather than because of what it means on its own. Throughout my grandpa’s decay one of my aunts didn’t think of no-one but herself and her self-interest. She used the situation to feed her megalomaniac selfishness. Now that he is gone I bet it’s going to get worse. My other aunt and my father don’t give a damn about my grandpa’s scarce properties and money and they wouldn’t care if she took everything and left with her troubles to somewhere else, unless she didn’t drag my grandma into the darkest of miseries as she went. My father is going to need a lot of support. If my grandma moves in with my parents they’ll be able to keep her protected from her oldest daughter. This’d be the best that could happen.
From what I’ve heard and seen throughout my life, it seems my grandpa hasn’t been a good man, although he partially redeemed himself towards the end with well intended actions and gestures. In this sense he’s probably had the end he deserved: a very depressing one. Most of what I’ve learned from him has come by taking him as a negative example. Still, I’ve loved him at times and I’ll remember him every now and then, even if I won’t miss him much and despite the fact that I want to turn the page on this event as soon and quickly as possible.
Tomorrow I’ll miss my working hours because the funeral is scheduled to take place in the morning. I’ve already texted the human resources department telling them what has happened. I could take up to three days off for the decease of a close relative according to my employment contract, but I won’t. I intend to be back at my job on Tuesday. Actually, tomorrow in the afternoon the classes of my Master’s degree will begin and I’ll do all I can to avoid skipping them. Biologically I am a partial product of my grandpa. I am one of the traces that his transit through this world has left. Thus, I believe that striving to make the best I can out of myself with what God has put in my hands to this day is the most enduring and valuable tribute I can pay to his memory.
I don’t know where you are. I don’t know what’s become of you these couple of months. I’m aware I’ve got some sort of obsession around you. I don’t think I know you that well. Maybe it’s just the idea I’ve come up with about yourself that drives my thoughts every now and then towards you. Still, I believe, and I feel confident about it, that some of the pieces of that idea are real; as real as this moment. I just hope that they are the fundamental ones and not simply peripheral specificities of your personality. You’ve implied in certain ways and occasions that you are a little cracked in the head, but aren’t we all? When I’ve heard you say something along those lines, it has sounded to me more as a confession about the loneliness you feel rather than the verbalization of your alleged diagnosed insanity. Probably this is the reason I was drawn to you in the first place. I sensed we were both drowning in the abyss of our own and separate universes and I thought that if we shared our individual desperations and sorrows we might get some relief from one another, feel better and maybe even heal a little. I’m certain it has worked at times and this has made our bond grow closer and stronger; yet, not enough. It seems the world is too complicated and it keeps pulling us apart every once in a while and we haven’t got much of a clue about how to cope with it, so the stream of life simply drags us away despite our frequent –and in some seasons almost constant– attempts to stay put and fight back, even when we’re feeling alive and strong. The truth is that we are lost in this madness we can’t quite figure out, but we endure because we hold on to the belief that it will get better. However, there is nothing more terrifying than the awareness that it could get worse at any given moment and for no predictable reason. But then again, faith is what keeps us on our feet and the sight of each other has given us strength every time. Furthermore, perhaps the worst that could happen to us is not that horrible. I say to myself every day that I mustn’t be paralyzed by fear of any kind and that I will not surrender. We don’t know what’s going to happen, and this certainty by itself should be enough to give us the impulse we need to take the next step; but not to become reckless or wasted. If so we will fall further into this darkness that destroys us; this loneliness is never going to end. I know it for a fact. I can’t say that you will find yourself, but at least you’ll get room to breathe through the charm of love (not only we need to give it, but to learn to receive it as well) and your frozen heart will begin to melt.
I think it’s pretty obvious that I miss you. I just pray you’re safe and sound, alive and well, taking care of yourself and surviving the best you can.
