.

Better Days by Don Bernal

 

  I’ve seen better days, when the sun didn’t stalk me from behind and girls wouldn’t care whether or not I was looking at them.  Those better days when I used to be able to walk down a hallway and all I would care about was where my classroom was.  When I could stand in line to buy food and look like a guy standing in line to buy food.  Waiting was no problem because I could just look dumb and, well, look dumb.  Life was full of better days.  Life is never going to be the same.

    Now I notice the sun stalking me, following me from behind.  My shadow races me home while the back of my head burns by sunlight.  I see only an empty horizon, never a sunset, because the sun always hides behind.  I turn around and the sun disappears, like it was a note someone stuck on my back.  I’ll never be able to see, and I’ll never be see why someone would do that to me.

    And I’ll never look at a girl again with having her look back.  It’s the looking back that I can’t comprehend.  It’s the looking back that makes the whole thing not worth it anymore.  I look at people, I look at girls, I have to because I write and writing means putting down what you see and what you know.  And looking in the mirror feels dumb, stupid, and ultimately pointless.  I have to look at other people, at other people doing what other people do.  Other people do a lot of interesting, amazing, disturbing, violent, curious things.  When left to their own devices.  What other people don’t do is look at me.  That’s not part of the plan, not part of the routine.

    Now I can’t look at somebody without that somebody looking back.  Looking back is destroying my writing.  I can’t write if I can’t see, I can’t see if I can’t look, I can’t look if I get looked back on.  My better days have left me, the ones when I was invisible to the world because the world didn’t care.