Alma De Mi Vida

Five years; the book, finished and waiting, had been sitting in a box full of my childhood possessions at my mother’s house, guarded by toy soldiers and teddy bears. My mother’s house, decorated with photos of family and friends I had never met, felt empty even at its full capacity. I grew up to the sound of clinking champagne glasses and crowded dinner table discussions, my mother’s avoidance of being alone, even if she still felt it. My mother played at being a good host, but there was little else I knew about her, despite being the only person living with her after I turned five.

My bedroom, my safety, was the only place I could escape the unbearable coldness of the house I spent 17 years in. I spent hours in my bedroom, sitting at the wooden desk that had been my grandfather’s, pen in hand, scrawling through countless notebooks; pages of stories, memories from ever since I could write. I wondered about my mother, about who she was, aside from the ghost I knew. I wondered about my father, who never came home after work one day. I had letters to piece together the puzzle of why he disappeared now, but at the time I imagined every possible scenario. I wondered about the son of my mother’s co-worker, who I had met at multiple of my mother’s entertaining nights. And so, I wrote. I wrote every time my mother shut me down while trying to open up to her. I wrote every time I imagined a story that would explain the absence of my father in my life. My writing became the only thing that stood beside me and kept me company through my teenage years and into adulthood. Until I stopped, and never picked it up again. The last thing I wrote was that book. In a way I thought that the memory of us lived within that book, within my writing, and by leaving it alone, I could keep that memory alive. I could keep that version of us still breathing, before life moved on. Before we were met with the harsh reality, before we really knew who we had to be, as the world - or apparently more importantly, his parents - wouldn't accept who we had always been. No matter how shiny and well organised we packaged the news, it wasn't enough. We had to sculpt ourselves into something new, and I had to do it without him.

Life was never the same crafting it by myself, never had it felt so lonely and cold. Even my childhood felt like a warm, soft blanket compared to the arctic breeze of adulthood I felt almost daily. It was a Wednesday when I saw him for the first time in years. I was on my way to work, a lonely office job that kept me company and a roof over my head, despite being utterly poisonous to my soul. I stopped at the coffee shop, a glimpse of warmth in the icy, polluted city. His eyes met mine, a cold, dull blue that had once been full of life. He stood there like a ghost, just like my mother. Not blinking, not speaking, I wasn’t even sure he was breathing. Then he gave me a smile, just a short one, but it was enough for me to know that he knows. We exchanged pleasantries, quick “hello”’s and “how’ve you been?”’s, but he knows. He’s always known. Something deeper than words exchanged between friends or lovers, that we’d always be bound together within our souls. Before I turned to leave, I left him to ponder my final thoughts. “Years from now, I’ll dedicate a book to you, and we’ll both know everything but decide to remember nothing, for the sake of the soul crushing fantasy we never got to live.”