by
Dec 19. 2022
"A Bittersweet Memory"
지나가는 생각들
There was a time when the life I lived was hanging on a thread after years of living on a high lane. Perhaps because of the decades of living not having enough at all to keep my family well under the general level of poverty, I had no other choice other than jumping into where the quick money was, as to bring my family above the water before the gravity of not having money at all drowns us below ground. Luckily, it worked out, and as if I was saved from a long years of droughts I began drinking the nectar and devouring the fruits that were handed to me for no cost at first.
So I back then lived the life on a high line, and instead of my life leading the way, I allowed the world to run the course. It was easy, and did not seem to matter at all, and I was pretty good riding the waves of what the capital city of the world offered through its pinnacle - the sum of what we call Wall Street. The world offered new and tantalizing life, and I thought for some years I deserved all of them for the effort I dearly put into acquiring them. I even thought it was a blessing from God.
When you have money, not just mere money - a whole lot of money, things come to you. I remember the rides, places, people, and things that I enjoyed that no ordinary people were not given access to. I was never short of saying "You shot the rapids at Kenai. You ran with the bulls at Pamplona. You jumped out of a plane over the Mojave Desert" to claim my magical powers and guts I thought I had naturally.
However, it was all a pipedream - a mirage, and I fooled myself thinking that what I had was mine, and once the bubbles subsided, I was left almost nothing with me. While busy living the life that I originally should not have lived, my family however wasn't living the life I wished they would with the money I made. They have been humble and modest as they always have been, not because they did not like them, but because they were not just those people, like myself, who did not know how dangerous money can be.
Life turned around so, but I could not tell my family what I was going though. So, I lived the life in pretences, acting as if. It won't be too difficult to imagine, if you ever went through a similar experience as I did, unfortunately, what happened afterwards.
I wandered a lot, in and out of the city, looking for ways to get out of the trouble I put myself in, or trying to put myself together to rebound. Looking back, those moments of wandering offered no consolation or answers to what I needed. The entire world was blazing with the holiday spirit, but I was completely isolated from such festivities.
However, during those days of wandering, I remember one particular evening that was turning into a night. I never forget that night. I was driving around, wandering, thinking, and I pulled over at a side of a road in a very quiet town in New Jersey. I remember the light glowing from a window of a house that I never stopped by or pulled over at before. And I remember the darkness falling as I sat out there on the street looking in. A warm atmosphere glowing from a lighting fixture hanging from a ceiling, and what seemed like a small family preparing a very ordinary dinner, together. Farther inside the house, a pot was boiling, steaming out, whistling. A television was on, emitting the blue, opaque light into and through the window that started to cover itself with the mist as the outside became colder by the minute in the mid December evening. The scene defined the peace that I long have forgotten, and I was left alone missing so dearly of what I have been missing.
