THE PREFERENCE OF MEN

With Chris I could realise also how different I behaved compared to other boys my age. Through their behaviours and actions, I was forced to acknowledge the fact that I stood out from the so-called 'normal' teenage boys. We looked at the same world, but we didn't see it the same way.

In order to avoid the embarrassment of my childhood, I took great interest in observing Chris, his preferences, and his choices to be able to do the same. Since we were boys and 15, we enjoyed the freedom to go out and have fun on the beach or at parties. I walked and acted like my best friend despite the knot in my stomach with every move he made. It wasn't me, but for sure, people liked it.

Was this really how everyone lived their lives?

Play being one or another to belong? Up to what age should we keep taking part in this debilitating game?

With each of his steps that I followed, I felt myself dying. I was being erased from the surface of planet Earth. It seemed to me then that no one else like me existed in the world, neither at school, nor at home, nor in the streets, nor on television. Seized with a sudden fear, I began to wonder if that made me some kind of monster or mutant, not really strange, not really human, but something in between. My parents and the school director in Katowice were right: my behaviour came from some other world somewhere. This thought made me feel quite alone in this one. This sad revelation hit me like a club every morning when I woke up and every evening when I went to bed as if to remind me of what I was: different. In Chris' company, the club fell on me even harder like a rabid dog.

At that age, even in such a beautiful country like Cuba, it had never occurred to me to look around me to see that each plant, each tree, each animal acted all differently; unique. They were also very much alone in the world in their own way. The inconvenience of my difference didn't come from me, but rather from the world that judged me relentlessly, measuring me to the millimetre to compare me with others. Ah! Other people! Obviously, they were everything that I wasn't. Would I ever become like them one day? Different. It is only written down on paper that those silly human thoughts reveal their insanity.

I know now that every teenager goes through the same waste thoughts, but at that time, for anyone like me who couldn't fit any box, it felt even more confusing to navigate my way to my true self. I call it the original being that resides in the depths of each of us, hidden well away from the judgement of others; the original being that dares to arise when we are alone, in nature or surrounded by people who look at us without any expectation. Do you often find yourself looking at a tree thinking: "This tree should be bigger, darker, and it should definitely be planted somewhere else"? I guess not, unless that particular tree represents something useful to you. However, when it comes to people, it is different. Every human being seems to be destined to serve the ego of the human being in front of them, even if that human being happens to be oneself. The carefree young teenager I was at 15 didn't know that. So, he never questioned the words or actions of others. His words and actions alone were to be judged.

I let you imagine my thoughts as a teenager and the damages they were causing. I am sure you have had a lot of them too at the same age, or maybe when you were older, perhaps even now. We both know that the game of playing one or the other to belong doesn't stop at the end of puberty. It may only stop at an old age like mine, after discovering the treasures of solitude and the weaknesses of the coward men in the crowd. Only then, we finally understand that the point of our human existence was never to belong. In fact, the purpose of our existence consists of observing again and again the world and its wonders. Truth always ends up finding us exactly where we are, exactly as we are.