Day ???: What Never Left Me

Memories flooded his mind.
They did not come one by one,
but all at once.

His perception of reality was distorted.
Zick suffered an anxiety attack.

—Damn it!
—Why the hell them…?

His voice came out broken, trembling.

—They were everything to me.
—The only ones who were there to support me.
—Thanks to them, I was able to get better…
—But everything went to hell!

His breathing was irregular.
His chest burned.

—Their deaths made me understand harsh reality more clearly… —he thought—
they even reaffirmed thoughts and beliefs that had always been there.

—WHYYYYYYYY?!

He could not stop hearing his own voice echo.
Again and again.
With no answer.

The responsibility for his actions, for fate, and for the dream he pursued
weighed on him more with each passing moment.
A burden he felt slowly wearing him down.

My days are numbered.
All I have left is to give my best… and die trying.

Ongoing gentrification only pushed them further down,
marginalized them,
expelled them from what they once called home.

Look at us.
We are already dead in the place that once belonged to us.

You are the product of what is,
of what was,
and of what could have been…

If only you had not taken the wrong path.

My family is to blame, to a certain extent.
So are the expectations placed upon me.
Expectations I could not fulfill.

But above all,
the weight of those words that never faded:

"I no longer have hope in you."
"I used to believe you could be someone."
"If you fail, don’t blame anyone else."
"You are the cause of your own mistakes."

The system makes life meaningless.
With its stigmas, its impositions, its molds.

It creates nothing but zombies:
people without direction,
incapable of seeing beyond the material,
the superficial,
the banal,
the libertine.

They are not dead.
But they are not alive either.

They move forward without looking back.
Without understanding what once meant everything.

They will never learn from their mistakes,
nor from the past that shaped them.

That is why I believe balance must exist.
To rescue what is good from both ways of thinking,
without letting ego corrupt it.

Every time I turn back and look behind me,
only one certainty remains:
how insignificant we are before time.

The system promotes individualism.
That way of thinking seeps into the collective.

So, are we an individualistic society
or a collectivist one?

The truth is, we are both.
A collective that adopted the individualist idea.

The problem is that both have been deeply distorted.

One should not always depend on others.
But in extremely difficult moments…
it should be possible to ask for help.

Systematic dehumanization is a structured process,
sustained,
often institutionalized.

A system that strips people of their dignity,
their individuality,
and their rights.

It does not happen in isolation.
It becomes normalized.
It becomes everyday.

It is the denial of another’s humanity.
Treating them as an object,
as a threat,
as a thing.

The cost of blind loyalty.

I feel trapped in a period of time
that should never have existed.

A past that continues to affect me even now.

I struggle to express emotions.
Apathy grows.
Boredom.
Disconnection.
Indifference.

Very few things manage to free me.

Guilt.
Hatred.
Frustration.
Fear.

The weight of expectations.
Not fitting in for thinking differently.
Seeking freedom by doing what I love most.

The fear of the fleeting nature of human relationships.
Distrust of others.

My father’s screams.
The laments of a mother trying to understand
a different son,
burdened with trauma and psychological wounds.

Then it happened.

Energy began to emanate from his body.

At first, it was fuchsia.
Unstable.

Then it changed…
It grew denser, darker,
the color of blood.

A shadow covered him.

It was not hostile.

There was a presence.

It was protecting someone.

Zick would not stop crying.
His body reacted on its own.

Then… it stopped.

Silence returned.

Zick remained seated.

With a mark on his neck.