Four years, in a prison in Mexico, it's here that my story begin, alone in a solitary confinement half alive, half rust, eaten away grain by grain. My thoughts keeping circling back to that terrible day: the day I accepted to become the disciple of the man who decided to stand as the enemy of the world. My name here is the forgotten dog, because of him, if only i had never become his attack dog, i would never had needed to be in prison and escape his hand...
Potential. Talent. God's gift. You've heard those words before. But did you know what hides behind them? What it truly means to be strong, to be different?
If only I had known that such simple words carried so much weight perhaps everything would have been different.
Before i encounter him, I didn't belong to that world. I was too ordinary to be called gifted: average life, average parents, average grades. Nothing in me, nothing around me, could have prepared me.
My days followed the same rhythm, like a clock that never broke: wake up. Eat. School. Homework. Sleep. The alarm rang at the same hour, in the same room with the same dull grey walls. My parents' voices downstairs blended with the TV news half arguing, half laughing, repeating the same phrases I could recite by heart. They weren't bad people, just normal: nine-to-five jobs, questions about grades, reminders to brush my teeth.
At school I wasn't invisible, but I wasn't special. I wasn't the brightest or the dullest; not athletic, not clumsy enough to be mocked.
People remembered my face, maybe my name, but never for long. I was the student teachers forgot to call on, the friend people texted when they were bored. My grades reflected that never a peak, never a fall.
At that time i remember thinking that it was the cruellest thing of all: to be doomed to be forgotten, chained to a fate I never chose.
And that morning should have been another average day. Same alarm. Same breakfast. Same walk down streets I could navigate with my eyes closed. But the air felt heavier, almost electric, as if a storm was waiting behind a clear sky. People hurried past, faces pale and tense, as if they felt something I didn't.
I ignored it. That's what you do when you're ordinary you tell yourself it's nothing.
Then it happened. As i began my way to school.
He stood in the middle of the road like a break in the world i thought knowing. Blood soaked his clothes and the asphalt; smoke curled from the cigarette in his mouth. His hands tattooed, scarred, broken hung like weapons. Everyone avoided his gaze. They crossed the street, hurried on. I couldn't move. My chest tightened; my legs rooted me to the pavement.
But i was there in front of this mountain
And he looked at me. Not past me. Not through me. At me like he was peeling back the layers to find something I didn't know I had. It was the look I'd always wanted: not pity, not disdain, but recognition. A looked that shater my expectation, the look of someone that realy saw me,
A silent howl: you exist. and i see you.
When he finally spoke, his voice was rough, somewhere between menace and promise. "Do you want to rise?"
If only I had known what being talented truly meant. If only I'd understood what it meant to rise.
If only i had knew what real power was, i would have never seek those eyes.
The door opened. I stepped out.
Air hit my face sharp, clean.
I stopped at shop window and stared. My face looked back. Not the same boy. Not even close.
The sun burned down and the scars on my body showed up like black lines on roadmaps: raised skin, pale threads, the proof of what had been done to me. I could count them with a glance.
His voice came back from somewhere quiet: "Do you want to rise?" I had said yes. That yes cost me everything.
Now I had nothing left to lose. No pity. No excuses. Just a line to walk.
I started down the street. My steps were slow. My hands were steady. I knew where to go.
I am ready.