A Part Of My Thoughts

The beginning

In the deep winter night, the only light came from a distant dawn, promising a new beginning after long, dark months. As the first rays of sunlight crept over the horizon, the frosty landscape began to shimmer, revealing a world transformed by the light's snowfall. The silence of the morning was profound, broken only by the occasional crack of ice in the nearby river. Each breath was visible in the crisp air. A reminder of the cold that still clung to the earth. The coat was pulled tighter, feeling the weight of the past month's lift with the arrival of the new day. Ahead, the path through the snow-covered forest beckoned, leading toward whatever awaited beyond the horizon. The promise of change, of renewal, was tangible, and steps were taken forward with cautious hope. With each step, the quiet solitude of the winter morning was embraced, finding solace in the beauty of a world blanketed in snow and the hope it brought for the days ahead. 

Thoughts raced through my head as I waited for the winter dawn in the cold bed. When I was little, my mind thought it knew what this world was bringing. I had a ton of toys, which I naively thought were my friends, that they would always be there for me, until I turned 12, when I realized that they uselessly take up space in my room and collect dust. Such things began to have real value in practical life. The toys were placed by people, people I knew, luckily or unluckily for me. I was the one who threw them out of life, like those toys from the past. My father loved to buy them for me, he brought me one toy every day, I had the most of them in kindergarten, I thought my father loved me, but when you grow up, you realize what kind of people they really are, even those you thought you didn't have what to discover, because they were too unrealistically perfect. 

My mother was my biggest support, she was a person I could count on at any time of the day or night, she had a strange approach, sometimes unbearable, but I knew she loved me more than anything in this world. Growing up we fought a lot. Her words hurt, but at the end of each day I had to give in out of desire for happiness and contentment in our relationship.

I turn to the right and see the guitar that I loved to play. I went to music school for 8 years, those were the best days of my life. There I met many friends with whom I still hang out today, all of them are now in a band. I'm the one who lies down and looks at the ceiling, pensive, because that's the only thing I can do lately. I gave up playing for many reasons, I couldn't imagine myself as a person in a band, I didn't like playing for others, I was happiest in my room, with my guitar in my hand and my thoughts far away, so faraway that no one could bring them back. 

I liked to go far with my thoughts, thinking about the things I wanted. I would have no one to judge me, no one to criticize me and tell me it was a waste of time. If we were honest, we are all sometimes alone with our thoughts, we all dream about something so beautiful, not knowing if it will happen at all, our fate has always been in our hands, but we have let it out of our hands too many times to believe that imagination comes true, too many times we pushed our hands into a burning fire when we needed warmth, but we are human, we make mistakes, so we exaggerate. I wish we could forgive that exaggeration, ourselves or others, but no one has the power and the strength to forgive something so painful. So painful that your heart sinks at the very thought. No one's dignity is subject to other people's feelings.

 How many stories did we listen to as children? Where the good prince always defeats the bad person, where the good girl always finds her way back to happiness, how many times do we not react to a knowing lie because we think they really didn't mean it? The number is so large that it could not be written on one piece of paper.

 I rarely play it now, before I couldn't spend a day without taking it in my hands and hearing the sound made by the strings, that sound gave me all the peace and happiness I needed, I often think that if I start playing now, I might be the old me again, but I knew that it would take much more than a couple of strings to bring me back, so I gave up on that idea a long time ago. My father loved music, he liked to sit in his armchair for days with headphones on, I always thought he had potential, not for singing or playing, but for creating music, writing songs, and that could only be done by people with imagination, with the will to creativity and intelligence. 

I inherited that from him, at least that's what everyone told me when I was still living with them. My stepbrother Jack persistently pushed me to play for a while, his faith in me was huge, but I had to disappoint him, though not by my own will. Jack is two years younger than me. He is my mother's first son from a previous marriage, I did not want to meet her ex-husband and I would like it to stay that way, it was better not to ask about it, in this marriage they are happy and that's the only thing that matters. Jack accepted my father as his own. 

I moved away when I was 20 years old. I wanted freedom, but lying down in my bed obviously represented that, I want to change that. I looked away from the guitar to the picture on my desk, it was a picture of the four of us, the "Perfect family".

 That's how they named us, while Jack and I were still in high school, we were interested in medicine and we both went to that school. My relationship with Jack was always the way it should be, he would be there for me when I needed him, even though he needed me more, I was older. 

At school we had the nickname "Perfect family", our parents were popular since my father wrote a couple of songs, of course, we were not known to the whole country, but for a small place like a school, it had to be heard about. We had a good image of ourselves, everyone wanted to know if there was something between me and Jack, there were a lot of rumors and lies that everyone at school made up, I believe that they were just too bored with their lives, those things didn't bother me interested, they didn't affect me because I was a person who knew the truth, so why does it matter what others think? 

 My brother was erratic in high school, he was calm and withdrawn when he first came to live with us, when he was only two years old, I grew up with him and considered him as my real brother, he never caused any problems and that to me was strange at first.

 I remember how many times my mother told me stories about me when I was his age. That day I was alone with my nanny. When I was three years old, I had a fork in my hand that was still wet from the freshly washed grapes that I ate from the plate. There was a socket next to me, I thought that the two holes were intended for a fork, although I have no idea why I thought that, so I pushed it in. The last thing I remember were the doctors around me in the hospital.

 Since he started high school, Jack started going out with many girls. At first it didn't bother me because I knew that the time had come, when a man wants to "live". He had his first relationship in the first year of high school, she went to class with him but their story fell apart the day he saw her with his best friend. They got into a fight in the middle of the big hall and from then on it became his routine. Now that he is 20, such things are not common, but they do happen from time to time. When he was sent to the director, the first person they called was me. I would pick him up at school and with a hint of incomprehension say everything that came to my mind, you can't blame me, that was almost every day. When he finished high school, he devoted himself to medicine, and is currently studying medicine at one of the best universities in the world.

 I am proud of him that he succeeded, that he managed to leave what was and take everything new that will come. "Perfect family", those words are still ringing in my head, why did people think that a couple of songs and popularity make a family perfect? Because I knew we weren't. 

I always saw New York as a huge city in which I would never manage, while now I have been living here for two years without any problems. I work as a manager of a hotel where my father used to work. He obviously left a good impression as soon as they didn't even think about whether I would be the new manager or not. My job is not hard, though..it depends on the day to day. There are days when I can be at home and answer the phone if one of my colleagues needs to report something to me or asks what they should do, but sometimes I have days when I have to be at work overtime to handle all the paperwork, that was the most boring part of my job.