Kismet

 Yes, freedom is deterministic. But to follow one’s own determinism is to be free. Prison is to follow a destine which is not your own. There is a huge feeling of freedom in having a kismet. This is free will. 

Unsent

 Dear OQ, yes I cherish who we were 30 years ago: two young men with a multiverse of lives ahead of them, yet limited by the wisdom beyond their years. I remember thinking you looked like an owl but now I know you are an owl. 

To my beloved MP: I understand that you do not wish to be part of my life and I am grateful you left me guessing for, despite my need for closure, I don’t think I’d survive hearing from you that we are no more. 

GN, all I wanted was your time. I was heartbroken but now, having made it through the wilderness, I decided that I am not ready to let it go, so I won’t! I am not the type who forgives - or forgets, so I won’t.

Dear little LC. No, it doesn’t get better but it does look easier with time: everything is temporary if you give it enough time... and - ah, the best part is that, after it all, the mystery remains intact. 

Goodbye IR. With you I learned that there is a difference between dreaming and pretending, so I left. I wasn’t ready to present you the anatomy of my crash, so I left. I am so sorry I left…

MK, I know I am still missing the miracle: “One step at the time”, you grumble. You deserve the rapture for putting up with my Jackyl and Hydeness as you take me back to square one, clearing the flash-backs as we go along. 

Mysteries of a dream

I am asleep. I know this may sound contradictory, but as suddenly as it is soft, the pleasure of sleeping wakes me up in a jump scare, which is also soothing. I am awake and I still feel the taste of the rural pastures where underground I spread my roots in dreamy tentacles. 

If I were Myself…

 When I can’t remember where I safely placed an important piece of paper, out of frustration, I eventually ask myself: If I were an important piece of paper, needing to be placed somewhere safe—where would I be? Sometimes this works. But other times, the sentence itself—‘if I were’, disorients me so completely that the search becomes secondary. Suddenly, I catch myself spiralling. Or better: detaching. And I don’t do well when this happens.

As soon as I become, a sense of shame rapidly follows. I then blush because the lie that started it all takes the place of the reason I couldn’t articulate in the first place. But at the same time, I recall the biographies of those who only became themselves when they weren’t, and in that absence, lived their truest lives. I think that if I were truly myself, people would avoid me. Even my face would change. How? I don’t know—but I know it would. Half of what I would do if I were myself I dare not say. Some of it would land me in prison. If I were myself, I would give away everything that was mine and trust the universe blindly.

“If I were myself”—the most dangerous way to live. A path into the unknown. And yet, something in me whispers that if I survived the first call of recklessness, I would experience the world. And in experiencing it, I would feel it—joy, pain, and everything in between, but magnified. Suffering without end, but also the ecstasy of a joy so pure, so unquantifiable, that it would consume me. Even the boredom of being lost before a vast, indifferent nothingness would be the height of my own powerlessness.

That is—until I lose an important piece of paper.