I have to admit that it is strange to be homeless, due to pride and a conversation. Usually, people end up homeless for more significant reasons, but I ended up homeless because of a fight with my mother, like a wayward teenager running away from home because her parents don't accept her relationship.
But this situation felt much more stupid because what triggered this fight was out of what was supposed to be a concern for my family's safety.
But in the end, ironically, my actions ended up pushing us apart and breaking the meager relationship we had left, and it all just blew up when I refused to apologize and tell the supposed truth about what bad things I was doing while I was missing.
Because of things I didn't want to explain or talk about, I ended up in a series of misunderstandings, which ended up destroying our trust and the bond that united us. But what made the problem explode in my face were our personalities and beliefs.
Well, even though I refuse to admit it out loud, I'm more like my parents than I'd like to admit.
At the end of the day, I ended up inheriting the worst parts of my parents' personalities: I'm too stubborn, almost always convinced of my beliefs; often, too quiet, preferring to keep my problems to myself, believing that I can handle everything; too proud to ask for help, characteristics that almost always make the situation worse. This time was no exception; staying silent, hiding information, and refusing to explain anything only made the situation worse, and it was at that moment that my pride got the worst of me.
So, instead of superficially apologizing by admitting mistakes I didn't make to maintain harmony, I ended up letting myself be carried away by anger and frustration, getting into a fight in which I won nothing and implicated by my nature, I left angry after an argument.
***
After wandering the streets for a few hours, unsure whether to abandon my pride and return home and apologize, or hold on to my stubbornness and the feeling of betrayal that was washing over me after so much effort and sacrifice, only to be treated like some sort of criminal upon returning home, I decided that I didn't wish to return just because of my feelings of betrayal and frustration, based on things she didn't know and I didn't want to explain, or maybe I was just being stupid holding on to my anger, refusing to return, and essentially admitting that I was just throwing a tantrum. Guided by those feelings, I decided that instead of returning home, I would find someone who I thought would understand my point of view, someone to stay with until everything calmed down, or until my pride was worn down enough for me to hypocritically apologize for things I wasn't sorry for, but for that I needed to be emotionally stable enough to fake emotions of guilt and regret.
But before I did all that I needed a place to stay.
- *knock*, *knock*, *knock*
So I decided to go to Beth's house, also known as Elizabeth, a person with whom I have had a rather peculiar relationship for the past few years, with our relationship being in a highly ambiguous state, in which we are much more than friends but less than anything serious.
Well even though we've been together for so long and some people recognize us as a couple, the truth is that for both of us the other was just a stop in the search for happiness, I simply wasn't enough to be part of the future she dreamed of, she being a woman with her whole life planned out, and for me she would never be the love of my life for which I would be able to abandon my reason and lose myself in the moment, that's why even though we live and act like a normal couple, there was always an imaginary distance that prevented us from connecting genuinely, that kept us in this strange limbo in which we were between being everything the other but with neither of us willing to give in to a fantasy, which the other could destroy at any moment, because our type of relationship arose casually and for the simple desire of not being alone, and in some way this relationship lasted longer than it should, because we both knew that the other could leave at any moment when they found the true love of their life or who they had been looking for for so long.
But despite that, I felt like I could trust her in a way because for better or worse we were involved in many ways for long enough to understand the other person's character and eventually develop trust in the other person's character.
This trust was what brought me here after ending up in this kind of situation.
But when the door finally opened, I discovered that I am not a very good judge of character, because I discovered a scene that could have been taken from a bad drama, but there it was right in front of my eyes, shattering another part of my reality.
Another guy opened the door to the place where we shared so many moments, and as if it were a way to confirm the betrayal, as I looked behind him, I saw her, who hurriedly tried to hide herself before stopping, simply staring at me as if I were a stranger, refusing to even give me an explanation.
- Do you need something? The guy who was much taller than me said to me with a stiff tone, which let his accent be noticed; He probably came from a French-speaking country, you could tell by his tone of voice that emphasized certain letters and sounds.
At that moment my world stopped, I felt my world much clearer than it had at any time in the last 72 hours; my mind raced as if to find a solution or an answer to the problem in front of me.
First, the guy was too put together; he had recently arrived or had been staying at the place.
His clothes, too casual to visit his partner, flip flops instead of shoes, confirm that he is probably staying here and, from his attire, he is quite comfortable staying over.
His expression, was too relaxed and cheerful for me to think he was getting into arelationship.
She looked more unkempt than usual for her at this time.
This made it easy to tell that whatever she was doing, it left her pretty tired, and in that state, she was too lazy to tidy herself up afterward; her posture, her slicked-back hair, the arrangement of her clothes. All of this painted a vivid scene in my imagination, revealing everything I needed to know, and although many answers popped into my head, only one would work.
Violence? No, I don't think it would work, as I doubt I could beat someone who is almost 20 centimeters taller than me, because from what I see, he is a little over 1.90 m, approaching 2 m, while I am a little over 1.70 m, and based on our physical differences, I think resorting to violence would not work out well for me, although I wasn't planning on resorting to that.
It's kind of sad to know that I am incapable of doing it even if I want to.
Drama, no, sadly in this one I don't feel like losing the little dignity that a man has left, who was replaced by his partner in a matter of weeks, and I really doubt that fighting for a casual relationship will allow me to keep my dignity.
In short, the only option is to keep quiet and walk away with some of my dignity, and while I'm not happy about this, I'm not happy about this; I don't think fighting for something that never belonged to me will get me anywhere.
- I'm sorry, I think I'm in the wrong place; I was looking for a friend's house, who told me he was waiting for me, but I think I got the wrong address.
With that apology, I hurriedly turned around while pulling out my phone, pretending I was going to open an app to send a message to my "friend" to try to confirm the location after getting lost, on a phone that, ironically, had been dead.
For hours, all this while I was walking hurriedly to get out of that place as quickly as possible.
- No.
- I won't.
- I refuse.
- I won't be me.
- I refuse to cry about this, I won't be the one to cry in the end, I refuse to be the victim.
- I refuse...
- I refuse this...
I repeat these words as if they were a mantra, a set of words that I hope will somehow miraculously help me control what I'm feeling. Why the fuck are you sad? Why are you suffering? You knew this would happen at some point, you knew it long ago, so why do you choose to suffer now that it finally happened? I repeat those words as I sit at a lonely bus stop, to try and find the voices inside me, to try and call out all the thoughts I can't control at this kind of moment.
- Enough, enough is enough; you need to calm down, If you think about it, compared to all the shit you've had to endure so far, this is something insignificant, something that, if we look at the whole picture, is just a small stain on the canvas. I try to calm my conflicting feelings by relying on reason, but since when did reason win out against emotion; if reason was that strong, there wouldn't be so many crimes of passion, committed by people who knew the consequences of what they were about to do and that it probably wasn't worth doing, and even though I'm just refusing to function properly, the comparison is apt, as emotion almost always wins over reason and right now I'm suffering the consequences of this.
It was enough…
I yelled at myself as I forced myself to stand up, and started walking without a clear direction.
I would like to say no, but I know my mind isn't clear right now, but for the moment I think I just need to walk and breathe a little to calm down.
***
Honestly, I didn't know where I should go.
So I just kept wandering for hours.
Finally, tired, I stopped to rest on a sidewalk in a place I didn't recognize at first glance, but when I looked closely, I realized I was back in the place that had been plaguing my nightmares for the past few months.
It was a considerable distance away, but I recognized it.
This was… the hospital where the tragedy that would change my life forever happened.
Although I wanted to escape from this place, something inside me forced me to stay in this place, waiting for something even though I didn't even know what I was waiting for, I was convinced that I needed to wait.
So I did.
I kept waiting for a time I couldn't count, while the only thing that accompanied me was the moonlight in a clear sky that was in conflict with my mood at the moment, but I think it would have bothered me if it had been raining.
***
Then, suddenly, it happened; I felt it inside me: what I had been waiting for had arrived. So I quickly stood up, my body stiff from the cold and from having been in the same position for a long time, but the discomfort no longer mattered; what I had been waiting for so long was here, and I only had to walk a few meters to find it.
Then I saw it, there was one of the people who caused the nightmare I had been living in for the last few months; for others, he was just a low-ranking thug in charge of transporting goods, but for me, he was another of the authors of my tragedy. And before I knew it, I found myself walking behind him, wondering why he was in this place, at this time, because as far as I knew the exchanges happened in a different period, and no one related to him was in this place currently, so why is he here? But with each step, the importance of finding out why he was here began to dissipate, and I just let myself go with everything I had been feeling these past few months, I was frankly being rational, thinking about the consequences and having to plan, for a moment I just wanted to let myself go, and it seemed like this guy was sent to tell me that it was okay, it was okay to lose control for once, it was okay to not think about the consequences and just do what my heart told me, so I could only wonder if there was some higher being; was it God or the devil who had brought me to this guy at this precise time and place.
As I followed him, I already knew what was about to happen, and oddly enough I was at peace with it, although I knew this person's story thanks to research.
I didn't feel guilty about what I planned to do, I knew he was relatively young, just 2 years older than me, and his mother had to raise him on her own, like a typical single mother, since his father abandoned them before he was born, sometime later she had a second marriage from which a daughter was born, but her husband died in an unfortunate accident leaving the family in a precarious situation; his sister is quite sick due to a sexually transmitted disease, which she acquired at a time when her mother was seriously ill, while the medical bills and bills kept piling up, and she was desperate to get money to pay for the treatment and protect her sister.
She was forced to sell her body, but her actions will have unexpected consequences, because although her actions saved her mother and brother from a tragic fate, she ended up with a strange disease that is currently slowly killing her, and now her brother wanted to repeat history, saving that person who sacrificed her body and her dignity to protect him and his mother; I know perfectly well that that guy only got involved in this shit to save his sister, something that for him is the right thing to do, but for me that doesn't matter, because he didn't care about what would happen to the victims of the business he got into, so why should I? At this moment I stopped caring about his sad story; after all, we all have a tragic story, all normal people have a fairy tale without a happy ending, so why should he be different, if so many have been in similar situations without choosing the same path as that type of person, but the truth is that all that doesn't matter to me, this world is already full of tragedies and neither his nor mine are special, but he chose to be part of mine and he will pay for his choice, and although I want to think that this is for justice, the truth is that what I'm doing is only out of hate and pain, and although I understand the reasons behind his actions that doesn't calm my pain and my anger...
And I may be being redundant, but I'm trying to drown out my conscience, to convince myself that what I'm doing is necessary and right.
Because on this day I'm finally tired of being another victim, I'm tired of playing by rules that prevent me from seeking justice.
I want a world that's fairer to me, and if to do that I have to become the villain in another story, then so be it; I'll be satisfied if I get the justice that's rightfully mine, no matter what I have to do to get it.
That day I swore that if no one gave me the justice I deserved, I would have to take it upon myself.
TO BE CONTINUED…