#8 - The after
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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