I don’t really connect with people that haven’t been through something. It’s like they’re not alive yet. Like they haven’t woken up.
Everyone has thinks they know what they would do, how they would act, who they would be. But until time comes, the truth is that you don’t really know.
But the funny thing is, I yet to meet someone without a battle. And maybe it’s that I can see and feel people’s battles.
It’s a peculiar part of being human. Consciousness seems always come with an accompanying duty. A price to play.
I met those that ignore theirs. Refuse to see it. Wish it was something different.
Others never look for it. Don’t realize they have one, need one. And live in oblivion.
The people I like, there’s no question. And their battle is not a choice. There is no choice. It was their battle before they were born. And it will continue to be their battle after they die.
And that duty. That inexplicable connection to a purpose larger than yourself, bestows up you a way life. And when I follow mine and feel it in others, is spreads the deepest feeling of connectedness, of life, of permanence.
I think it’s why I’ve always found comfort in the old. The reused. Something that fights it’s battle and it’s just what you think it is.
Growing up, I’d go to my grandma’s house and sit on the bed my father slept on when he was 12. Smelled the itchy, crocthed blanket that kept him warm when his dad was still alive. And turned the glass knobs in the bathroom he turned so so many times to wash his face. And it all feels like it has been there, it is there, and it will never not be there. Like it was maktub. It was written for it to be there. And it has it’s battle to fight, and nothing else.
There’s an inescapable calm that comes when you’re surrounded by those who fight their battles. And by thing that fight theirs.
Maybe it’s the illusion of control that comes with the certainty of things always being what they are. Or my fear of one day it not being like that.
The feeling of strength that you are going to war with true warriors by your side, that won’t turn on you when the enemy has more guys that you thought. You can swing away and know they’re also swinging.
I grew up in a time where certainties, safeties, and expectations slowly got peeled away. One day you learn you can’t really go to the park on the lake anymore. Your friend Enrique’s dad got killed at gunpoint in an attempted kidnapping. No more park.
Another day you wake up to welders at home, welding bars on your window. A few houses down, last Sunday your friend Franco and his family got tied down and his entire house was ransacked. You wondered why his wrists were red at school. But now you’re happy the bars keep others out, keep you in.
Another day, you see your mom turn a utility closet into a food storage room. She no longer trust’s she’ll be able to go to the store and get the milk, eggs, and ham and cheese you need for breakfast. Now that room is the hope she’ll have the food to needs to feed us.
Another day, a guy with a gun on the back of a motorcyle knocks on your window with a gun. No more mom driving alone, I drive now.
That made me feel many things as I kid.
I felt a deep sense of curiosity. Why? Why are things like this. I don’t think anyone wants things to be like this. But you have no control. Others have decided that things aren’t fair. So they decide they’re going to take. Take for theirs even if it meant taking from yours. Someone who, in a different life, could have just easily been wearing your shows. Someone that could have taken the bus with your uncle. Or let your grandma go ahead of him for her mercado. And that lit a fire in me.
A fire in me that I cannot see, but it is there. A fire that will burn until it’s burned the brush, the fallen leaves, the dead. And left way for life to spring back again.
This fire reminds you to be on. It guarantees that you’ll never, ever be caught off-guard. What you control, you will control.
For my 17th birthday, I asked for a safe room hidden behind my closet. I wanted to know that if I was to be tested, I’d be ready. Every time I’d think of what would happen, I’d trace my steps. I’d unlock the bookshelf, I’d grab the gun and the magazine. I’d take my mom and sister, lock them in the safe room. I’d give my dad the shotgun. And we’d do what we had to do to make sure no one took from ours.
But if I’m being honest, it never happened. But it’s a fear that’ll never leave me.
My duty is to be do what everyone like me wanted to do but couldn’t. To protect those that couldn’t protect theirs. And for that I am thankful because it cuts through a lof of the bullshit. It makes life easy. That fire turns everything that doesn’t really have to be there into ash.
You burn away the envy or resentment.
You spend what’s yours, no what’s not.
You smile even when it feels like you shouldn’t.
And you only deal with those you should deal with.
People with a fire, a battle, with blood. Where you all do what you’re supposed to do.
Above all. This fire brings a calmness that’s hard to explain. But the problem is, you remember that the calmness is earned. You have the taste of blood in your mouth. If you’re not calm, you’re in battle. And there is no in between.
And having scars is only really tough if no one else has them. But when others can see your scars, and show you theirs, you know you’re not alone.
Some are just not to lucky have been tested. And to those I wish they get punched in the mouth. They get scared. And I wish you find you like that taste of blood.
And you devote your life to you battle, you feed the flames inside you. And you find others that fan those flames.
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