Description
Introduction
I was a kid when I had the dream that still makes my skin crawl if I think about it too long. I woke up inside a coffin.
Not in a poetic, dramatic, let’s-write-a-song-about-it kind of way. No. I mean the full-service version. Dark. Tight. Air going bad. Panic climbing my throat like it had a ladder. I remember waking up screaming that I did not want to die, which, for the record, is a very reasonable position for a child to take. If you are small and you open your eyes and your brain says, Congratulations, you are now buried alive, you are allowed to be a little upset.
That is where my life started teaching me its favorite joke. The joke is that you can be terrified and still have to get up the next morning. You can be a child and already know that the world is not gentle. You can be screaming on the inside and still have to eat breakfast, go outside, and act like you are not one bad moment away from becoming a permanent resident of fear.
Later, the world got more creative.
In those rooms, I met other kids who knew the same language. Pain does not care where you are from. It does not care if your father is rich or poor, if your mother cries quietly or loudly, if you were supposed to be at school or at home or anywhere else. Pain just walks in and says, Make room. So we did. We made room for each other. We became friends in the places nobody would choose on purpose. That kind of friendship is different. It is not built on pretending. It is built on seeing someone flinch and not looking away.
That was part of the lesson too. Survival is not glamorous. It is repetitive. It is annoying. It is mostly showing up again after you already got hit once, twice, or twenty times. It is learning that life does not care about fairness nearly as much as people claim when they are giving speeches. The world does not hand out guarantees. It hands out bills.
At some point I started noticing something else: adults are not nearly as different from children as they pretend. We just get better at hiding the mess. We distract ourselves, chase pleasure, call it living, and act surprised when the body keeps score. We eat too much, drink too much, work too much, lie to ourselves too much, and then look offended when our own habits come back wearing a diagnosis. Maybe it is coincidence. Maybe it is consequence. Maybe it is both wearing the same coat.
I had to go to a foreign country and work there without knowing the language, which was a beautiful way to test whether humility could survive contact with reality. I took a three-month English course, which sounds impressive until you realize three months is barely enough time to learn how to order coffee without sounding like you are negotiating a hostage release. Still, there I was, working around highly educated people, making my way with broken language and a straight face. And somehow, against all odds and common sense, I earned their respect. We laughed about it. A lot. Because if you cannot laugh at the fact that life keeps handing you situations you were not qualified for, then what exactly are you supposed to do-cry in the break room and ask for a refund?
Maybe that is the whole trick. Not pretending the pain is not there. Not pretending the loneliness does not exist. Not pretending men do not get abandoned, under-appreciated, divorced, tired, and quiet in ways nobody notices until it is too late. Maybe the trick is finding one person who gets it. A neighbor. A friend. Somebody who has been through something similar and does not need you to perform masculinity like it is a stage act.
Because the most beautiful moments are often the ones we do not recognize yet. They show up plain, wearing work clothes, sitting across from us, asking how we really are. And if we are lucky, we answer honestly.
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