A year later
Right now, beautiful. At peace. An hour ago I was getting off the subway and, sweating, I was meditating on the word "overwhelmed." I find it hard not to let myself go lately. Tonight, I lied to everyone. (…)
Right now, beautiful. At peace. An hour ago I was getting off the subway and, sweating, I was meditating on the word "overwhelmed." I find it hard not to let myself go lately. Tonight, I lied to everyone. I said I had training and therefore wouldn't have time to be there. Not for volunteering, not to answer messages, not to see anyone. In fact, what happened is that I offered myself a wonderful gift. I came home, took a shower, cried, curled up on my yoga mat, and prayed. Finally, I found this moment. This sacred moment where no one knows where I am. Where I can simply be and write (my two favorite verbs). And I give up nothing. Neither the desire to love, nor the strength to win, nor the secret desire to be heard. But I let myself be. Guided. Just a few hours. I let the light decide for me.
No one told me I’d have to sell bread. Or walk across the whole city. Or wait so long to see my dreams become a reality. But I also understood something: it doesn't matter if I can't afford the camera right now. What my soul longs for is being part of the whole, being absorbed. To see everything, feel everything, in the middle of a crowd as in the midst of a forest. My soul cries out in pain when I stay in. It's not the city that suffocates me, it's not having the opportunity to see every aspects of it. Not looking at people, mingling with them, witnessing the smiles, the moments. I wish you had seen this, the other day. There was a couple in the street, two young people in their early twenties with two children already. The young man was in a wheelchair, and the two little ones were sitting there too ; one on his lap, the other on the footrest between his legs, and they all looked so happy. They were laughing, eating ice cream. If I'd had my camera… Click. You should have seen their joy, Lidy, mingled with the sunlight. The scene moved me.
Anyway, I lack the means, but my circumstances can't stop me. They don't affect my mood or my determination to capture the beauty of the world. I made a pact with myself, and with my mum, a long time ago. La vie est belle — life is beautiful — and I'm going to prove it. —
Child & Bird, Barcelona, 2024 —
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#8 - The aftermath
Stars are born out of their own collapse. We shall remember this phrase. We’ll make a good use of it later. So it happens. One day, just like that. Either by choice, or because life has decided so. Suddenly, everything we've ever known disappears/has disappeared, the boundary isn’t clear and (…)
Stars are born out of their own collapse. We shall remember this phrase. We’ll make a good use of it later. So it happens. One day, just like that. Either by choice, or because life has decided so. Suddenly, everything we've ever known disappears/has disappeared, the boundary isn’t clear, and it's like watching the shore recede from the back of a boat. We haven't yet understood what just happened, but when Mother Earth is nothing more than a dot on the horizon, we realise that it's a one-way ticket we have in our pockets and that it's too late to take the plunge.
Things will never be the same again.
It takes about a year, then, to get back on your feet after a hard blow. Mum was right. A year of wandering through the dark valley. Then one morning, the sun rises. We close our eyes, by reflex, and grief becomes what it has always been: an uninvited road companion.
From the depths of the abyss, the walls open up. On the other side, there's the sound of cars and children playing. How strange everything seems, suddenly. Do we have the right to do this? To continue living after a whole world collapses? We move barefoot in the direction of this dream, observing passersby and life going on with its things... They don’t seem to know. Someone should tell them: I've lost everything.
But the survival instinct... Survival instinct is the immutable force that propels blood through our veins and makes our eyelashes flutter when we wake up and follows the smell of croissants in the street. Survival instinct is the traitor to the lost soul who wants nothing but this: to lose itself. Because it's impossible to fight against it. Life doesn't ask for permission to enter.
Like a blade of grass growing between the paving slabs. Or a smile that makes us blush, or a big laugh that escapes us. It bursts in, kicking down the door, even without letting our guard down.
Walking, then. That's all I've done since I arrived in Barcelona. Walking to think, walking to recognise, to rebuild myself. I've left things behind me, time passing by, I've let bygones be bygones, I've drawn boats and written sentences on little papers to left them on the beach. Without realising it, it just happened. Because life doesn't ask for permission to enter. I've learned to enjoy carefree days again.
Wandering around like this for those long winter months and wet spring days, I learned to look out for those things that were able to steal a smile from me every now and then. Like breadcrumbs on the way. I picked them up, one by one. I wasn't ready to experience them, but I kept them, just in case, for later.
And in the depths of my night, it happened. I saw a little light¹ turn on. It was a Tuesday afternoon, in September. There was a homemade paper ad stuck to a traffic light. I pulled it off, took it home and since then, everything has changed. —
¹ : That’s the name of the Gospel choir where I sing, since 2022, Little Light Gospel Choir.
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#7 - Hay que seguir
Sometimes I get tired of telling nice stories. Of making delicate, “sweet little drawings”. Of telling things from the perspective of resilience. You're lucky. You've been so lucky in life. I won’t deny it, but if I could, I’d throw up that sentence. Sometimes I want to scream when (…)
Sometimes I get tired of telling nice stories. Of making delicate, “sweet little drawings”. Of telling things from the perspective of resilience. You're lucky. You've been so lucky in life. I won’t deny it, but if I could, I’d throw up that sentence.
Sometimes I want to scream when people tell me I'm brave. I don't want to be brave. I want to live a normal life.
Spend a night without nightmares. Go grocery shopping without suffering a panic attack. Be twenty-nine years old and not still depend on my parents for food.
Sometimes, I wish I could stop laughing. Go back to that moment when I was blind and shake myself, get a good slap on the face. ‘For God's sake, stop smiling!’ Because laughter was everything. It hid everything. Justified everything. You had your hands on me and I was laughing.
And at night, when I close my eyes, I see nothing but that. You and me on the railing. You and me in the park. You and me in secret. In innocent secret. I'd like to vomit everything about you and me and all those people who never stopped telling me how lucky I've been in life.
“Is that what lucky means to you?
This is the last time I look back.” ¹
Sometimes, I just wish objects could become objects again, rather than symbols. I wish a city could be just a dot on a map, rather than the source of all my misery.
But I found the courage. And I dared to speak up. So there's no going back, no more mundane mornings, or laughter without pain. I have to learn how to take the bus again, alone, and not jump when a stranger speaks to me. I have to remember how to calm a panicked child, and do that for myself, every time. Be angry for once and stop forgiving everything for the sake of... whose good, again? Accept that those who left made a real choice.
So we may cry along the way, be terrified, broken or exhausted, even pretend to be okay with that for a while. But whatever happens, hay que seguir. Find the strength and keep going. —
¹ : From the poem I’ve heard it said.
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