Passerby

Many months later, as he was lying on his aching back, staring at the soft sky and surrounded by barren trees, great giants looking down on him, Daniel remembered that faithful day when he started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The cover was a pleasant shade of green, and the title seemed interesting enough, so why not? Back then, Daniel didn't have his library card, so he bought it from a bookstore near his dorm.

Walking back to his dorm, with the book hidden under his black leather jacket, wary of the stigma such objects emit in a dorm full of teenagers, he sees some of his dormmates chatting outside of the entrance, sitting on the bench. He never really liked the people who sit all day chatting on that bench, but he greets them nonetheless. They return the greeting and seem mildly excited, thinking that maybe, like he does once in a blue moon, Daniel will join them. No luck this time, because, even though he isn't showing it, the mere thought of talking to them is making him sick to his stomach.

He makes his way up the stairs and enters his room, the first one on the second floor, to find his roomates, Tyler and Nathan, wasting away. Tyler, tall and blonde, is playing some stupid game on his phone. The game is grindy, pay to win and aimed at otakus. Besides playing that game, or some other equally trashy ones, he just scrolls through social media all day, and sometimes even goes to school. Tyler is smart and capable, but, ever since Daniel knew him (they came to the city from the same small town and attended the same local school), he was ambitionless and didn't aim to do anything significant with his abilities. He seemed content with the idea, so why should anyone bother him?

Nathan is to Tyler like land is to the sea. He is hard-working, bright and has dreams of becoming a doctor. He will, in all likelihood, make it. But he has one fatal flaw. If Daniel didn't know about this flaw, he probably would have considered Nathan his role model: he wants something in life, and that thing is obtainable and will bring him happiness, and he is working hard towards that. But this is an illusion.

Becoming a doctor won't make him truly happy, because he didn't choose that. It is just a job his parents picked for him because it pays well and is respected. He just accepted that because his flaw is that he just can't think for himself. He can't come up with solutions; he needs someone to show him how, and then he repeats it like a robot. This is how he studies for school, memorizing the material and getting straight A's. Daniel can't decide which one is worse. On one hand, "failing" in life like Tyler, not getting a well-paid, respected job, and not starting a family or successful business doesn't feel ideal. On the other hand, even if you do that and retire at 40 years old, spend your golden years on the beach drinking rum, watching the grandkids grow up, and leaving nothing original behind, it's just as bad.

The world is full of doctors and businessmen and happy families, but so few of them are actually memorable. No, actually none of them are memorable. In the short term, an absurdly rich CEO, or someone extremely well versed in their job, will be well known. Give it a couple decades and they might be forgotten by their own families. If you can invent something great, or achieve something mind boggling, you might be remembered for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. But at some point, you will be a footnote, and then forgotten.

These thoughts have been haunting Daniel for a long time, maybe since his freshman year of high school. He wanted to make his life count, so he did well in school, aced every test, taught himself how to code, started painting, and immersed himself in the world of classic literature. He did this so he could try and emulate the greats: Shakespeare, Beethoven, Tesla, Newton, or anyone of them! He just wanted to be on the same level as them. The most he wanted, he desperately wanted from life, was to be remembered.

And this is why, that evening, he started reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's work. He sat and read the whole thing in just three days. When he saw how even the Buendía family and the great Colonel Aureliano Buendía were forgotten, swept away by the wind, something in him changed.

Nathan and Tyler, were the only people in that dorm that Daniel talked with during that time. He sat with them to eat and was reasonably talkative, just enough to not raise any suspicions. With everyone else however, he was cold and emotionless, only saying what needed to be said. He even stopped greeting his dormmates. At school, he was still doing well, at the top of the class, but his class was only the second best class in the school, and that made him think he was doing poorly.

The feelings were the same every day: overall numbness and sometimes mild disgust and sadness. He started going on more trips alone, exploring the city, like he did with the forest from his childhood: sometimes stopping at a coffee shop, or watching a play at the theatre, but he never talked with anyone. He was just a passerby.

The days started going by faster and faster, and the feelings became even sparser. The only things that remained were numbness and sadness. Before he knew it, winter break hit and he went home.

When he arrived, he saw some of his paintings on the wall. He thought about how his art was always a few inches away from being decent, very close to being enjoyable but never actually getting there. So was his code, most of it worked, but there was always that one thing he couldn't wrap his head around. At that moment, he felt immense anger and ripped all of them from the walls and put them in the fireplace. He grabbed a long, thick rope and hid it under his jacket. He left his home without telling anyone and went to visit the forest.

He hadn't visited it since grade school, so it was quite nostalgic, seeing how some trees had grown a lot and others had gone missing. He looked for it for about two hours, but he couldn't find it. Just as he was about to give up and figure something else out, he found it: an old, incredibly tall tree at the heart of the forest. When he was ten, he carved his initials into that tree. With determination, he climbed the tree, a remarkable feat considering his weak phisyque. When he got to the top, he took a look at the beautiful view, which would have left anyone else's mouth agape, but it didn't impress him in the slightest. After some more deliberation, he decided that it's impossible for him to be remembered, so there is no point to this bad tragicomedy we call life. He attached his rope to an old, thick branch, then to his neck, and jumped into the void.

The branch was too old. It broke. Daniel hit the ground hard and just lied there, remembering the day when he started reading One Hundred Years of Solitude.

The broken branch was falling towards him, and by instinct he rolled to the left, and it barely missed him. In a twisted way, he found it hilarious. And then he found it sad. And then empowering. He could give it meaning. He was the only one who could.