Behind My Silence

I Am Truly My Silence

I am what I do not say.

I am every emotion I suppress behind a smile, when inside my heart is flooded with tears that for some reason cannot come out.

I am every kiss I haven’t given due to my shyness.

The "I love you’s" that wither away until time erases the memory of each intense emotion I’ve had.

I am the hugs I need every time I keep my hands in my pockets.

I am, and perhaps we all are, everything we choose to stay silent about for the sake of "decency."

The world is built on lies.

---

At 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, August 10th, three years ago, I was ready to end my life.

My mind seemed possessed by an insatiable desire for silence.

To no longer hear my thoughts, in which I was someone whose soul was never satisfied.

To silence every inner voice that repeated that the accident of my existence had no role in the lives of others.

I wanted to stop thinking that my time in this world would be no more than a microscopic speck of dust passing without pain or glory in the annals of history. Damn it, maybe if I decided to die in some remote place where no one knew me, years could go by before someone noticed my absence, and that person would only do so because of the unpleasant smell that the corpse would emit from the room where I lay.

That August 10th, I stood on one of the busiest bridges in the city.

The whole morning had been sunny with a blue sky. However, when I made the decision to end it all, to jump off the bridge and fly to a world where only peace reigned, the sky turned gray and some raindrops began to fall.

As if fate wanted to activate all my senses one last time.

As if angels were crying for the tragedy that had been my life.

I stood by the bridge for hours.

Cars passed behind me, and I imagined how each person ignored my tragedy because they were all living in their own bubble of problems.

• Maybe the man in the blue Corolla had tons of debts and was doing everything possible to finally achieve financial peace.
• The man in the big red truck had left work to see his girlfriend, even though he told his wife he'd be late because of an "emergency meeting at the office."
• The girl in the old Malibu had to organize her daughter’s first birthday party.
• The young man driving the taxi hoped to find a client who would become the love of his life.

And so it goes, each one lives in their own universe.

And only they know their dreams and fears.

I tried to think about other people’s lives to distract my mind.

Or maybe because I envied each one of those people who had managed to handle their inner demons and live (or survive) with them.

There were also people walking on the same sidewalk as I meditated on suicide.

Some talked on the phone about the latest office gossip.

Others walked hand in hand with their partner, feeling a sense of peace in their minds and hearts that I envied.

Even a friend, a member of my now defunct band, passed behind me and jokingly said, "Don’t kill yourself, idiot," letting out a little laugh, to which I could only respond with a similar gesture, even though inside I was dying to scream for help.

The reason that brought me to that bridge three years ago was everything I had kept silent.

Every one of those "no’s" that I thought were decent at the time, but if they had been "yes," maybe they would have been the beginning of the greatest adventures of my life.

Every time I bowed my head before the eyes of the women who intimidated me when my heart felt like it was about to explode with love.

Silence.

The damned silence.

The one that even hid from myself the answers I so desperately sought.

Behind the conversations I didn’t have with myself out of insecurity about diving into philosophy and burying myself deeper into the insignificance of my existence.

Behind my fears of seeking what would truly make me happy.

Because I carried the guilt of my ancestors.

The pains of my mother and her failed search for love.

The ambitions of my father for constant pleasure elsewhere, which made him miss out on our lives on several occasions.

My friends and their pretensions to not be themselves to land better jobs, hundreds of women, and the banality of immediate pleasures.

Silence tortured my soul.

And ironically, with suicide, I intended to silence all those inherited and personal guilts I had carried throughout my life.

---

It became 7 p.m.

The rain began to intensify.

People were running behind me to find shelter in their homes.

And maybe that was all I was looking for.

A refuge.

A home.

A person to tell me everything was going to be okay.

As the hours passed on the edge of the bridge, I told myself the only reason I hadn’t jumped yet was because I feared the physical pain of a non-instant death.

But I was lying, as I had lied so many times to others and to myself.

I discovered that the indomitable part of my spirit was the desire to live.

But not the life I had lived until that moment.

Not the life where I pretended to be decent, polite, and where I restrained my words to get jobs, houses, friendships, and false loves, based on the convention of repressing what we feel to "not disturb" or not be considered the "weirdo of the city."

The wildest part of my spirit wanted to "be."

And it was that indomitable part I had forced into silence and unsuccessfully tried to tame to achieve all those modern-world aspirations.

I didn’t want houses, cars, or luxuries.

I didn’t want a shitty 9-to-5 job that would allow me to live in the falsehood of materialism, with pretty flowerpots in a three-bedroom house, two and a half baths, but where a wretched soul lived, unable to recall the last time joy had filled his heart.

It was at that moment, in the deepest abandonment, that I decided to live.

My way.

Without a plan, squeezing every moment to the fullest that life would allow me.

Becoming a ghost in the cities of this world.

In that plan, conceived in less than 10 minutes, I would visit each place for no more than two months.

During that time, I would arrive as just another stranger and fall in love with all its people.

I’d drink the cheapest rum with the street crazies.

I’d dance any type of music with the most beautiful women around.

I would share lunches and stories with those elderly women who lived alone and had never found love. I’d try to cheer their hearts by taking them to do all those things they didn’t do because of their "age." We’d skydive, swim in rivers, and drink coffee in the most beautiful places in town. They are perhaps one of my greatest inspirations, for in the midst of their loneliness, they found the strength, and even the satisfaction, of being happy and finding joy in the most mundane things of our existence.

I would learn a new skill in each place to fund my adventures.

Some months, I might be a musician playing in restaurants, where at least one person would be happy to hear their favorite song from my voice after many years.

At other times, I’d be a (non-professional) therapist who would take the time to listen to those poor souls who, like me, had no one to hear what they hid behind their silence.

In other moments, I’d be a comedian, making people laugh with the tragedies that had caused me so much suffering in the past.

And I’d continue discovering, exploring, living until one of my foolish acts finally ended my life.

I would be all those things I always wanted to be.

I would live all those lives I always wanted to live.

I would be my true self, the one that was hidden behind my damned silence.

After two months had passed, I would leave for a new destination.

Perhaps in some cities, they would remember me as the crazy man who sang Mexican songs with the homeless.

In another city, maybe a girl would remember me as the most beautiful love story she’d ever had in her life.

Elsewhere, a mother would think of me as the stranger who inspired her son to explore art, and thanks to me, he became the most famous and important person in the city.

When I understood the infinite possibilities life had for me by simply ceasing to silence my spirit, the emotion that filled my heart was uncontrollable.

---

At 8:05 p.m of that August 13th, I decided to go back home.

My original plan was to rest that night and think about my options the next morning.

But my heart was filled with an untamable desire to live.

The anxiety to explore the world and myself outweighed my rationality.

But it was that damned rationality of doing "what’s normal" that almost made me end my existence.

So, I packed some clothes, a small ukulele, and an old MP3, and I made the decision to embark on a journey to a world of infinite possibilities.

When my landlord finds out I didn’t pay the rent this month and enters what was once my home, he can take all the material things there as payment.

For none of that ever mattered to someone like me, tired of buying things and more things to have a nice house while my soul was in agony.

---

Last week, I arrived in a small coastal town called "Rincón del Mar."

I checked into a humble hostel, where the ladies working there greeted me with hugs, as if they had known me my whole life.

Three days ago, I saw an old fisherman who seemed to need help unloading the day’s catch.

I approached and said:

• "Sir, looks like you need a hand."

• "Yeah. Oscar was supposed to help me today, but he got drunk last night, and now his wife kicked him out of the house. Men these days don't know how to handle their liquor."

• "Well, if you need help, I'd like to work with you."

• "You? How many times have you worked at sea? This time of year the currents are stronger, and it's more dangerous to do my job."

• "Don't worry, old man, I've been doing this for years."

I didn’t even know how to swim.

• "Well, I can't pay much, but if it works for you, I'll give you a percentage of the catch. This is the best season for fishing, so if we work together, we might be able to pay for food, a place to stay, a pack of cigarettes, and a bottle of rum each week."

• "We start tomorrow!"

• "Tomorrow? I'm unloading the boat and heading back out in an hour. Are you ready?"

At another time, laziness might have been the excuse to hide my desire to live.

But I would never again say no to new experiences.

• "Let's go!"