Rewind

II: Living

After I leave home I make sure to kiss both of my parents. They still watch me with quizzical looks and I just smile. I know it’ll take a while for them to get used to this but I won’t waste another minute. I’m glad it was only a dream but it was vivid enough to make me open my eyes.

It’s funny how sometimes you are so oblivious to things that only a slap across the face can wake you up. It’s pain, it’s fear, it’s horror what makes you see and appreciate the things you have. When people say we only appreciate things once we lose them it’s true. Not everyone gets a second chance, especially when it relates to death. I’m glad I didn’t have to really die to realise I was wasting my life.

The worst part is that I know if I die today, even after I’ve realised and I’ve made my mind to change my life, I know almost no one would go to my funeral. My parents are forced to go because they are my parents, and I guess they would be sad. I don’t think they would cry, especially my dad, but they would be there. And I can’t think of anyone else that could be there. I have relatives, I know Dad has a brother and he’s married and has kids, but I know he moved to America and I’ve never met him. Dad never talks about uncle Fred, he says he’s a lost cause, someone who went after a dream of becoming an actor. I guess Dad is ashamed uncle Fred doesn’t have a stable job like his, that he decided to be an artist instead of a man of science.

I know that if I die today no one would remember me. Not even my teachers at college or my classmates. I don’t think they know me now, if any of them knows my name. Maybe Mrs White would remember me, she’s the only one that knows my name and whom I smile at.

As I walk to college I do something I’ve never done: I look up. I always walk with my eyes locked on my feet, avoiding everyone, too immersed in my own thoughts and dreams. I never looked around. I never made eye contact. I never took a look at my surroundings. So today I change that, I look in front of me, at the landscape. The streets with people going in different directions. I see the kids running, the cars passing by. I see the coffee shops with open doors for all those people stopping by for breakfast. I see the double-deckers taking so many people places. I see the birds soaring the sky. I hear. I hear the cacophony of a city as big as Manchester, even if I’m at the suburbs of the city. I hear fragments of conversations. I hear laughter. I hear crying. I hear shouting.

It’s so full of life and I can’t believe I shut that out for seventeen years. It’s like I lived inside a bubble all my life and I was content there, until my bubble blew up and I was left there, in the middle of the world.

For a moment it’s overwhelming and I have to stop to take everything in. I take a turn and look, with hungry eyes, all that’s happening around me. People I’ve never seen before, people I’ll never see again. People, like me, living their lives.

I see a girl rushing down the street, hugging her books and juggling to keep her bag hanging from her shoulder whilst she keeps a cup on her other hand. She looks like she can barely walk with all those stuff, but she manages, until someone bumps into her. A guy who was also walking in the opposite direction, too busy trying to have breakfast as he rushed somewhere. They collide and her books end up on the floor, coffee is spilt and I hear the screams and cursing. Until the lock eyes, until they see each other and the accident is lost in the past. She smiles shyly at him and he does the same, still looking at each other. He helps her to pick up the books and she offers him a handkerchief to clean his stained shirt. They keep staring into each other’s eyes, their rush suddenly forgotten.

How many times do things like this one happen? How many times have people met in the rush of a late morning? And this time I’ve witnessed one occasion. Who knows what will happen after this. Maybe they’ll keep meeting, maybe they’ll fall in love and remember how they met. And I’ll remember that, too, because I saw it happen.