Life tasted sweet, leaving no place for bitterness in the sparkle of my eyes. I looked at the clouds and imagined the galaxy. I held my mother’s hand with utter joy, as if her fingers could trace the greatest treasures of the universe. I smiled at every stranger while trying to picture which part of their heart ached. The friends I had were tattooed in my body with ink that would later fade into my soul. My body felt eternal and thus so were my dreams. The world was there for me to appreciate its beauty.
But then the clock began to tick; dew settled on my eyelids as each year passed. My traumas left baggage I could pretend no longer to carry. Each minute extends like never-ending torture. There is an uproar in my body, an unhappy cage which doesn’t agree with the injustice embedded in our system. I look for job after job after job after job after job. Rejection accompanies me like never-ending rain. And I’m soaked. I pack all my stuff with hopes to fly away and get better (no one warned me you take yourself wherever you go). And the cycle begins again. I look at the new city with hopes and dreams and think about those who are not allowed to cross the border. If only my passport had a different nationality I would not be here. Despite these thoughts, my eyes twinkle with opportunity and each step I take brings something anew. It will be later on, when I decide to take a step further that everything will crumble before me. I look for job after job after job and people begin to get sick. I get calls from my family asking to go back home before the borders are closed for everyone no matter their nationality (“except for those who go back home”). Homes begin to fill with people, families with absent parents forced to communicate and spend time together. A complex arrangement needs to be made.
In my experience, I locked myself with people who are not part of my bloodline. Half of my family does not know me; the other half cannot support me financially. Thus I decided to stay in London, the only city that ever whispered me a welcome and felt like home when I chose to run from my past. I am going through a depressive episode that would have probably been worse had I chosen to spend the time with my actual family. But I am hopeful. I truly believe in some years it will be impossible to imagine a life where things were difficult. We will struggle to remember how life looked when we had to keep two meters between each other and human contact was considered a privilege not everyone could access; the same way I watch a film right now and wonder how life could be so worry-free without these masks and no one seemed to notice. Sometimes the thought of returning to normalcy is the only one I can hold onto while everything else disappears underneath me.
from the time when life was full of possibilities
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