Hello, my friend.
Actually, I have known you for so long. But we have never talked. I know, it’s weird. I meet you every morning, pass by you, or you pass by me every now and then, but we’ve never talked.
Actually, I think it’s the right time to talk. Finally!
You’ve been draining my energy lately. You drain me to a level where I start stumbling, my head is spinning, and I don’t know what to do first.
You’re there, you’re everywhere. You scare me on every corner, shout at me, trying to make me do stuff I don’t want to.
You know, I actually realized that I want to meet you. I want to meet the bully who’s been following me for years. I want to know why he’s there, why he began to follow me in the first place. What must have happened that he’s stayed with me for so long? I want to understand his motives.
So here I am. Asking you questions, finding out if you’re really that dangerous.
See, and thus far, I’m just learning about you, observing you. Sometimes, I forget you are the one manipulating me to do stuff. It’s hard to realize it’s you making me move in a certain way when we’ve been together for more than 24 years. You’re a professional in what you do. I’m talking to you, but you’re inside of me making me move. You fake my itches so I can scratch them, but it’s all made up.
When I look at our past, I think we met somewhere when I was very young, say, 6 or 7? Or younger? I remember lying in my bed one night. My grandmother was next to me, and I told her that sometimes I get those itches on my skin where I need to scratch them. But it’s not sufficient for me to just do the move in one direction. I need to do it in multiple directions several times. I asked, “Is it normal, granny?” She said “Yes, it’s completely normal. We all do it. Sometimes, you do the move up and down, other times from right to left. It’s completely normal.”
But I was probably not able to express myself that well. Nevermind. It was my “normal”.
Then I remember you in my prayers. My second grandmother taught me how to pray.
I was praying for anything I wanted. I was praying for my family, the toys I wanted, I was praying for my health. I was concerned with my health from a very young age.
I don’t know exactly when I started praying, but I was very young. And I distorted the prayers in my way so they could fit my needs. You know, for example, when my father came home late at night and was drunk, fighting with my mother. I was afraid he could hurt her. When you hear screaming, smashing dishes and pots, your imagination pictures all kinds of situations. And I didn’t want my mommy to get hurt. Sometimes, I pretended that I just woke up and came to my parents scratching my eye like I just woke up, asking “What is going on, daddy? I hear some voices…” But before I was able to finish the sentence, my father said “Go to your room!”, pointing his index finger to my room. So I went back. Scared, alone, in my room.
This sometimes helped to calm the mood a little. But sometimes I needed to pray more and more. I created my own prayers because I would forget the actual prayers my grandmother taught me. So it was very weird. But I had to have some kind of beginning that would let me proceed to the actual things I wanted or didn’t want to happen, get, or achieve. When I think about this particular part of my past, I’m shaking even now, after so many years.
But you, my friend, this helped tremendously to establish our partnership. I believe we were inseparable from those beginnings, even though we didn’t speak with each other. Until now…
Every time a heavy situation occurred in my childhood, you were there, showing me who the master was and who the puppet was.
Do you remember when my mom almost died in that car accident? I think I was 14 or somewhere around that. Well, that was crazy.
I just got home on Sunday morning, arriving by bus where my grandmother was already waiting for me. I thought to myself that I was in trouble, that my grandmother somehow found out about the night before when we were with my friends, involving girls, drinking, and so on. But it was way different.
I can never forget when I got off the bus when my grandmother started talking… telling me “Mom had a car accident. She’s in the hospital right now and it’s serious. They don’t know if she will survive.”
Such helplessness. The feeling inside was so bad. I thought about my life without her, the only parent whom I lived with at that time. My closest one. I didn’t know what to do.
I prayed and prayed. And to this day, I believe it helped. I believe in many things because I believe they work.
But here, my friend, you really got me. You persuaded me that you are here for a reason. You got rooted in me so deeply. You didn’t want to let me go, and I didn’t want you to go. We were companions, even though we didn’t talk to each other. You just nudged me in the direction you wanted me to go, and I went.
There are a couple more things that I would say made my childhood “saucy”. Be it my experience with weed or that man who beat the hell out of me one Saturday morning, waiting for me with his twin sons in front of our building entrance. Well, he was a father to two. They were my classmates. We had some disputes, and it resulted in all of us getting reprimanded by our teacher. I knew their father beat them pretty frequently, and they probably just wanted to avoid being beaten again, so who knows what they told him to get away with it. “Lucky” me.
I thought I would never escape the cellar he pulled me into. I believe he actually told me that.
When I think about it, I don’t like to remind myself of anything from my childhood. Don’t get me wrong. I think my mother did everything she could to put food on the table and raise me to a certain standard. I love her, and thanks to her, I am the man I am today.
So you can say I’ve had a pretty good foundation and no reason for you to go away. Actually, I didn’t even think about getting rid of you. Until now…
You know you’re pulling me down. You’re no good to me anymore. You’re draining me of energy. And what’s worst of all, you’re around me when I’m with my son. And I don’t want you around when I’m with him. I don’t want him to see you. You make me do crazy things, and I don’t want my son to mimic my behavior.
Sometimes, you’re so intense that it’s crippling to enjoy any moment of my life. You’re suffocating me and it’s not helpful. So, what do you say? Can you just leave? Can you let me experience life without your manipulation? It’s not just for me. As I said, it’s also for my loved ones. I am not here just for myself anymore. My life revolves around my family, and I love it. I love being around them and focusing on them. It’s the best thing in my life.
And you? You are simply obsolete. I’m sorry if this offends you in any way, but you’re like an old PC. You simply have no use in this day and age, not even for the simplest tasks. You’re not even good for retro games from the past. You’re no good to me anymore. Actually, when I look at the past, you were not so good then either. I remember my roommates noticing me doing weird stuff in the dorm, and they would mock me behind my back because of you. Hey, I don’t want to point fingers only at you. I know I was weak and lacked an overview of the situation. I didn’t know how to talk to you. But now I have found my voice. I can talk to you now. I can let you know what I think about you. I’ve observed you for some time now, and I think you’re not needed anymore. You are a burden, and I would like to get rid of you.
I feel that I can move on on my own. So if you bother me anymore, I will talk to you, reminding you that I don’t need you anymore! I might be a little rough with you at times, but hey, I just told you that I don’t want you in my life anymore. So if you won’t listen to me, it’s on you. I will put you in your place. Because you know what? I’ve become pretty confident. I also maintain a good overview of many situations and things in my life. I’m skilled at finding solutions to the situations I find myself in. And I am also very determined. In general, determined. I make decisions very quickly, and making decisions moves me forward in life.
So this is goodbye, my friend. It’s been nice to meet you. I don’t want to hold any hard feelings against you. Who knows where I would be without you. But the past is the past, and I won’t let anyone stand between me and life anymore. This is a goodbye and a warning. As I told you, I am very determined.
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