Dear Stranger I

Dear Stranger,

I reached peak sadness in the summer of 2010 when my best friend died. Seven years later and I am still feeling the jabs and blows of persistent sadness in the face like uninvited gusts, on the weakest sides of an alien hut in a desolated island. And indeed I have grown to become an island of the skin of a man, enveloped in the very nuance of lifeforms. Existing but not quite participating. And it is true what people say that the past does move on but sometimes I believe we do move on with it. Following us through the journey every step of the way intertwining inextricably with the complexities of our lives, adding and subtracting details where necessary, always wanting to be felt.

I don’t even know you in a way I should be maintaining correspondence and you do not know me as well. But have you ever felt sadness before with everyone telling you to be happy that they forget to be happiness itself?

It is weird but I just need someone to talk to, someone that actually listens instead of judge me because of whom I have turned out. I believe we become who we are based on a certain timeline of our existence and I didn’t choose to be me.

I didn’t kill my best friend. She just died. And I remember sometimes we took long night walks that gradually morphed into shorter ones because even then she was dying. Her death didn’t come as a surprise. I expected it. When cancer comes calling, before you speak to your friends and family, before you take the next numbered breathe, or have a meal, or show an emotion, before you do any of these things, you first remember death your old enemy whom you have spent a lifetime avoiding and you ask, is it time yet? And it just smiles.

I remember her funeral. My cousins were telling me to not cry in the open. Which was funny considering they were equally as sad. But they begged me to not cry and I nodded. But when the time came to not cry they cried the most. Life is funny. We make plans until it is actually time to carry them out.

My best friend’s funeral was strange because some people cried more than they should have. And I imagined they did it for show so others could see that they too can be sad.

Do you know these men that carry coffins for a living? I don’t really remember their names but they did this stuff where they danced and did stunts with the coffin atop their heads. Life is funny. I imagined that one day some other people would do stunts with these men’s coffins too. And I think life is in weird stages. One day you are the cream of the walk. And the next day you don’t even exist anymore. And on that same day some of the people that mattered to you or at least pretended to will still lead normal lives that will point to the fact that they have moved on. Someone once said that on the day her father died or during his burial, I don’t really remember, but during that moment of peak sadness, her uncle was crying and dragging a bag of rice out of the house. Which I found quite funny as well.

To tell you the truth I don’t know if life would have turned out differently if my best friend was still here because I think the world is progressively getting sadder. But sometimes I am happy my best friend doesn’t get to experience this sadness. And I imagine that wherever she is now she is a bit happier than she would have been here and that makes me feel happy for a while before it fazes like vapor on the windscreen of a gradually disappearing car at the vanishing point of life.

I would be honest with you though I do not know you because I think if I do not tell you the truth I deny you the opportunity to really know me and to deny someone something good willingly is one of the meanest thing to do in this world. And so if I’m really honest with you, I do miss my best friend a lot each day. And sometimes I imagine what would become of me when I grow up and begin to forget things. Would I forget someone that once meant everything to me? Gunshots and wars are scary but I think this is scarier. Because for me, I believe one of the scariest things in this world is for people who meant everything to you once, to wake up one morning and not know who you are anymore. Then it is really sad. And there are many other sad things as well but some things are sadder than the others if you ask me.

When I grow up I want to do lots of things. But amongst these many things I want to do is painting. And as you already know, it’s so once a year I can paint my best friend’s face to show the aging. I believe that wherever she is now she would be aging. Or do they not age in other worlds? Then that would be sad for us here. Because only us get to see the bad sides of the universe.

Anyway I think I would be leaving now. The past blankets me in a weird way sometimes. And I don’t know if it makes me sadder comparatively or perhaps happier when I let everything out. But thanks for paying attention. Till next time.

Manuel.