Chronicles of a Soul in a Dead End.
Personal Narrative
I can’t sleep… another night submerged in my sleepless solitude. Just looking at the ceiling, while the lights come in from the streets hitting my eyes, and my pets reach the window to sleep by my side. 2:20 am, I get out of bed and take my pills when suddenly I feel dizzy and nauseous, I go straight to the bathroom to vomit, but I can’t do it. I end up with a big headache and no will to live.
I take up my phone to see what’s going on in the world; something has to upset me more than myself; I have disappointed everyone, including me. Ugh! Life was easier when Obama was the president of the US; I thought people understood that black people are more than slaves and workers. I believe they just hide until they have someone who can represent their shitty set of mind. We own a lot to mister carrot though, at least with him in charge we could unmask society and see that Clark Kent is no longer Superman.
Twitter did not work; I’m still awake. I put on my earpods and let Joaquin Sabina take over my ears. I let the music in the background while I think about how cool it would be to disconnect our minds like a machine. Think? What for? Why do people insist on being thinking-animals? Because we feel superior, because intelligence makes us complex, and at the same time miserable. But beauty, authentic beauty, ends where the intellectual air begins. The intelligence is, by itself, a mode of fantasy, and destroys the harmony of any person. Stupid and idiotic people are the ones who have the best time in the world. They can sit at ease and let their lives pass with their mouths opened, and their eyes blindfolded. Even though they know nothing about success, at least the disappointments of defeat are not a thing in their lives. They live as we all should, calmed, carefree, emotionless. They neither provoke the ruin of others nor receive it from other people’s hands. Why is it so difficult to breathe and making sense of those breaths so complicated?
3:15 am, Twitter did not work, either did music. I’m thinking more than I should be. How can I shut the voices in my head? I should write. I got out of bed, went to my desk, and turned my computer on. My mom wakes up and asks me what the hell I am doing awake at this hour. Oh lord, how much I miss living alone! I remember the satisfaction of arriving home from work and not hearing any noise, not a single person talking to me or asking me to do things. I have never felt uncomfortable doing stuff on my own. I take myself to the beach, a restaurant, and a nightclub. Even as a DC Comics fan, I use to go to the premiere of their movies alone and then with my friends.
I love having company, though; there is not a relationship like friendship, in my opinion. If my parents are not my friends, it is not worth it; if my significant other is not my friend, what is the point? I like enemies too, but I choose them, not everybody can be my enemy. I choose my friends for their elegance, reputation, and principles, and my enemies for their intelligence.
4:00 am, and I have not written a word… I just got lost in my thoughts again. I open Pages and realize I do not know what to write. I stand up and make a cup of tea while the 33c temperature makes my skin bleed that disgusting fluid called sweat. Looking for my muse, I see a comic book next to my computer, “The Killing Joke,” such a masterpiece, and, out of the blue, words started coming out of my hands.
“There was a kid who always wanted to be a Superhero. Since he was little, he would close his eyes and imagine the craziest stories; having superpowers and saving people so that people could look up to him, and he could inspire them.
What he did not know was that he was born with a superpower; he was invisible. He did not get it until he got older and realized how powerful he was; people really could not see him. Being invisible was cool at first, but then everything got dark. He could not see how he looked. When you are invisible to people, you start being invisible to yourself.
He would cry a thousand rivers with the same question in his head, “Why people cannot see me?” “Why do I not see myself from the outside?” “What’s wrong in loving the way I love?” “What if I had a superpower, I needed to be saved from myself?” He did not understand the enormous responsibility that comes with having a superpower.
In the middle of a breakdown, he decided not to have the superpower he had, but he could not get rid of it. He was terrified that people looked at him and see all his colors, colors that he did not even know he had. He’d rather let them judge him for his skin color than for the person he was. He hated his superpower but got so attached that he could not live without it.
Curious how one can learn to grow dead to the sadness, letting life pass through his eyes and looking for the blessing in disguise. And here it comes, the realization he did not have a place where to fit in, he could not save one single soul, either his. He was just born to exist. What kind of superhero could not save himself from agony?
He wrote, wrote to survive, wrote to feel he was alive. I remember a 12-year-old kid who thought he wasn’t enough to accomplish anything in life; just another black boy that always felt like an outsider; someone that didn’t belong anywhere; some random kid that was aware enough to realize how hard life was and would become later on. A young boy with lots of ideas in his mind, with many emotions, feelings, and thoughts, he did not understand and did not know how to express; full of confusion, weary of time.
Maybe that is why he started writing so young; perhaps he started doing it out of the necessity to let out with his hands what he couldn’t say with his mouth; maybe he is still looking for something that makes him feel worthy of existing, his everlasting saving grace.
You might look at that kid and think he has it all; you could see him in his golden cage, growing up in happiness, facing the world with courage. But you have not seen his true colors, you have seen nothing because you cannot see him. You could read his writings, hear his voice, and feel his spirit, but you will never see the real him.
He smiles through many tears and lives standing up every time he falls down, hides the sadness from his face, a happy face, while his heart is cracking down, and closes his eyes, imagining that someone could see him and reveal his true self.
That kid hides in me, that kid never wanted to leave, that kid is afraid of standing out and be more than just flesh and blood, but actually visible… Am I invisible, or are you blind?”
I stop writing and realize I’m crying; I’m crying as if I was at a funeral. I felt like crap just for realizing who my worst enemy was, and why this insomnia keeps messing up with my head. But, to be honest, even the bravest of us is afraid of himself.
I still feel dizzy, plus now dumb and devastated, and no sign of getting sleepy. My hands are shaking, and I feel as scared as when the Twin Towers fell down, and I thought I lost some relatives that worked there. I firmly grab the armrest of my desk chair and stand up, trying not to pass out.
Walking through the hall, I try my best to get into the bathroom. I reach the sink, pour water on my face, and look at myself in the mirror. For a long time, I have been looking for myself, and I couldn’t even find me in the mirror. I look up at the reflection of my face and try to regain my body balance as I think about how good it would be to drink some rum.
Are six months of sobriety worth wasting on a momentum? What does it matter that, after being dead, you have some vices? I walk to the Mini Bar my father has in the family room. I walk between stumbles until I arrive and see that there is still a little of my favorite rum, Barceló Imperial, and in one gulp I drink what is left in the bottle. I take a deep breath, and it suddenly feels like a relieved toothache.
I go back to my bed and start thinking about happy moments in my life, to get rid of that lousy vibe I have. I remember going to the movies and watching Batman vs. Superman with my back then significant other. Here I am, envisioning those moments and all the things we did together. Am I crying again? I cry with the most cheesy love movies. Silly Eduardo, how is it that you cannot sleep yet?
I have tried it all! It is 6:17 am, and I have no other alternative but to pray to God. I get on my knees, and I start whispering:
“Hello, God! Are you there? I hope you are; I hope you listen to me. Thank you, thank you for giving me all the things I did not ask you to. Thank you for my parents, although I don’t deserve them. Thanks for my friends, my job, and all the material things I have.
Now my question is, are you happy? Do you ever cry? Because I do. I’m tired of having this kind of Stockholm syndrome, falling in love with the same fear that got me locked in being addicted to losing. I keep being stuck in the jail I designed to stop thinking, filling my head with chemicals, draining bottles, deactivating neurons, losing my mind insanity. And I’m still trying to find pieces of art in this hopeless soul; I’m doing my best to shut up the voice in my head, unlearn everything I’ve learned, and unkiss all the demons I’ve had in my short existence.
Love, that’s what you are. In love you manifest yourself, for love you created us. From love, all your other qualities are born, in love all your passions are expressed.
How does it feel to be so high up? How is looking at everything? Your great patience, your goodness, your justice cuts through the unforgiving. How does it feel to see what you have created with love?
Why are we so similar to you and yet so different? Why do we love? Why do we feel? Why did you give the need for a purpose to a sack of flesh and blood?
I don’t want to love; I don’t want to feel. If I love, I look like you, but I will not receive your devotion if I do it. What is the use of living on laments and surrenders? What is the use of forcing the soul to live locked in the irony of love?
People are born; people die. People grow; people get sick. People eat, people beg for food. You see the righteous and the wicked, the hero and the villain, the good and the parasitic. Do you also notice the bodies that walk but have stopped living for years? Do you focus your attention on desolate souls in search of extinction?
Will you forgive me someday? Sorry for not obeying you as you deserve, sorry for not being grateful, sorry for feeling how I feel. I do not ask for mercy, and this is not a surrender, it is only a heart looking to disappear, tired of beating, tired of existing.
Will I forgive you one day? Am I an error in your system? Did you make a mistake in creating me? If you have made mistakes, that’s fine, we have all made mistakes, but if I forgive your mistakes, would you forgive mine?”
I open my eyes, and what was I saying? Was I disrespecting God? Somebody once said that the most significant things have happened in our brains. It is also in the mind where the greatest sins are committed. I have spent my whole life trying to do the right thing, what I was supposed to do. And even when I did “wrong,” I decided to make up everything I did. I have learned that the only thing we can do to get rid of the temptation is not to resist to commit it. Living in denial destroys your soul and makes you a slave of your desires, the same passions we have forbidden against our human nature.
7:00 in the morning, my mom wakes up as the sun rises, while I look at the window and let the sun hit me right in the face. I have not slept a bit, and I am not feeling good either. I turn myself to the night table, hold the pill bottle, and take all the pills there. Drink some water and hear my family getting ready to have breakfast.
And, as I close my eyes, my thoughts fade away, no sorrow, no pain. I’m going into my own dreams, where I can save me from myself, where there’s no place for hesitation, just a place to be loved.
