The Day I Died

I died, and it wasn’t from pain, or old age, or illness. I died, and it wasn’t from mourning, from ending, from longing, from joy. I died, and it wasn’t sadness, hate, work. I died, and it wasn’t in past lives or future lives. I died, and it wasn’t from anguish, loneliness, bitterness. I died! I died of being me.

Walls built with high walls and rough stones died in me. Walls that were so real that I thought they were mine were bigger than the Great Wall of China. Walls of prejudice, dogmas, thoughts, beliefs, certainties, and absences. Walls that I had to climb for miles and miles, that went as high as the moon. Years and years climbing the walls of certainties, and when I arrived and jumped to the other side, I saw that there was no other side.

Walls that were like cancers were installed in me. It was revolting; it seemed to be my organism, myself, but they were just walls getting in the way of life’s harvest. Someone put walls there on some distant day and said, “You have walls, and they are like your heart; you can only live with them.” Walls of great and spectacular illusion.

When I dragged myself between them, trying to climb, trying to understand, trying to notice, trying to think, “Walls, why do I have them? Why do they exist?” Walls of ancestral sovereignty. Pure concrete walls of fear, paralysis, resentment. Pure icebergs of tears. Tears uncried, hardened, that turn to iron and hurt. They hurt so bad, I thought living with walls was life. I looked around, not noticing the others with walls. Do they disguise themselves? Could it be that I come from the planet of walls made of icebergs of tears?

Then one day, before I died, I realized that it was a wall, but it might not be. I could just be someone who carried walls. Could I break down these walls? Wouldn’t it break me? I couldn’t kill me. I never had suicidal thoughts. I loved life, even with the walls. Sometimes I put some plants on the walls, or painted them colorfully. It was no use. The walls are megalomaniacs. It’s not the paintings that soften them. They are not. They were not.

Was I attached to the walls? I’ve never had a knack for masochism. I wanted to live without them, being them. My God. What a contradiction. Every day I asked myself, “Are you really going to live like this?” And I answered myself, “I’m stuck here, there’s no way out, do you see one?”

I was born on walls, and walls were born in me. Just like language, when you are born and learn it, you think you are that. I’m Portuguese. I’m English. I’m Korean. I’m Chinese. I am what I was taught to be—who I was taught to be—until I overtook my first language: anger.

Beyond the walls—me being me—I, like dragons, spit fire. I was born in the kingdom of dragons, and everyone spat fire, so I spat too. After all, I’m a dragon, I thought. When the fire I spat began to burn the others, I didn’t care, I thought that was it. Maybe I felt something was wrong, but after all, the dragons in my kingdom spat flames at me—it’s an accustomed pain.

One day, while I was spitting fire, I cried and could see that the tears had put it out. So I understood that when the crying comes, the fire goes away. From then on, I became fireless and stopped being a dragon altogether. Every time I wanted to spit volcanoes, rivers gushed out of me. The sad thing is that since I’m no longer a dragon, my kingdom doesn’t want anything to do with me anymore. And there I went away with my walls inside.

A while later, already far away, I discovered that walls are not me; it was then that I died and was reborn like a rose. I faced the darkness of being buried in the earth, not knowing if I was alive or dead. I became a sprout that struggles to get out of the ground, get air, and go toward the light. But I only did this when I died, and dying is harder than being reborn.

Because I came to understand that the giant walls of liquid concrete that permeated me were oceans of tears of pain, I had to remember every ounce of pain. I cried red tears from the death-blood of not being giant walls and died. I died; I was reborn; I went to the light; I am in it.

I am not a dragon, nor a wall. I no longer belong to their kingdom. Today, I define myself as the eagle that pulls its feathers and breaks its beak, thinking that it had reached its end. Months later, new wings and powerful beaks are reborn, and I am rejuvenated.

I fly high and alone.

I fly far.