I want to visit the living room of my own house, go through each of the rooms of my being and see where the storm starts, and lie down on the coast where the sun warms my spirit and encourages me to travel a new day. The boiler that inflames my anger and frustration is also a source of heat and energy to create and leave the refuge where I take shelter in moments of loneliness and anguish.
The passage of time makes me understand so many things that were confusing in my childhood. What was blurry before is now so clear; those silences of my parents are now screaming that I understand with each of my senses. I don’t need to be a parent to comprehend their quest, their frustrations, their fears, and postponed dreams.
As I walk the path around my property, I see how much it has cost to get here, I enjoy it daily, with the fear it gives when delving into that place that you think you know and recognize as home but I move forward with the courage that it gives me to know that I am learning and growing despite taking my refuge within my own existence.
I have always wanted to travel and see the world, but at this moment I need to know more about myself. What my eyes see is not my reality, what I hear on the street is not my truth, and those whispers that the city utters in my ear are nothing more than the reflection of other truths, I want to make the most dangerous trip of all, the one that goes to my heart, the one that runs through my fears and shame, the one that knocks at the door of my uneasiness, where the child who shrinks in a corner in the face of uncertainty hides.
I want to speak with my world, be aware of my own being, that my hands are unknown to me because I am capable of giving but not of healing myself. That warm embrace that I have been able to share in other people’s sorrows has been absent in my own tribulations.
I am afraid of unleashing my anger, that which is chained in Pandora’s box; talking about it scares me because I don’t even want it to hear me talk about it. It is there, under the surface, lurking and waiting to bite, I fear it, it is not respect.
If I see myself from the outside, I feel that I am in the middle of a no man’s land, where there is no place for tears. My house is built on arid lands, I have dried them on purpose because I do not want to sow the seeds of my own existence, I do not want to extend what I feel and perpetuate it in someone who will blame me for giving him such an embarrassing inheritance.
I am a friend of my friends and my own enemy, I hate, fear, and despise myself. I am a vagabond without a destination or a roof. The storm is coming and my shoes are torn.
The smiles are on the surface, there is a room that is full of light and colors, they flutter around the room, they shine, laugh, love, and live, but they are protected by a dog, a fearsome animal, thirsty for its own blood, who bites the hand that feeds him, which is full of marks and scars, he will not let you in because the light would blind you, he is there because I put him there myself and now he does not even recognize me, he does not obey me.
I want to eat, in my kitchen, there is more than one banquet to prepare, you are welcome at my table. There are no chairs, you must eat standing up because you enjoy little of the good and it must be fast, you never know when you should run.
The backyard of my house is full of moldy dreams and ideas covered with rust, in some corners, certain ambitions of freedom still flourish and compost is the shit of the birds of prey that flit every evening around my inhospitable desert. There is a little rusty bike that never had support wheels because I had to learn to ride it with scabs on my knees; I still remember the joy it brought me as I traveled through new spaces in my desolate neighborhood.
In the attic of my mind, I hide the toys with which I disconnect from the world. There is a small window that faces the front of the house but when I am there I only look up, no matter how cloudy the sky is, my hands move the plastic soldiers as if they were a battalion in the Normandy landings. Only when I am in this wing of the house am I able to speak hundreds of languages and in all of them, I say the same thing, in all of them I scream at the top of my lungs that I am alive.
I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I have gone down to the basement. That place is damp, dark, and full of shadows. Going down the steps has been quite an odyssey, I see photos of my parents, my friends, and my youth. There are hundreds of boxes full of dust, some of them still unopened since the last time they were deposited in those corners of my own existence. I have opened some of them and see that there are small pieces of a big puzzle that I do not want to put together. There are clothes with the smell of the last time I wore them, they take me back to their time, I see myself wearing them and I don’t recognize myself. I get hair gel, baggy pants, a skateboard, hundreds of CDs, pornographic magazines, half conversations, and friends who were swept away by the river’s fury. I see my mother as young, absent, and at the same time loving me, incongruous like me. I see working hands, there are boxes full of superstitions and teasing, insecurities, and childhood dreams.
Someday this house will be for sale or it will be demolished, but until now it will continue to accumulate memories, joys, and defeats. Its corners with dust and the smell of disinfectant, with hundreds of books still unread, broken windows, and unmade beds. A soundless doorbell and a ceiling full of holes, a half-painted fence, and a clear sign in red and hand-painted letters that reads: beware of the dog.
JDRM 01/19/2021