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jhojamillan

The Bamboo Closet



When you feel homesick there is nothing that can heal the soul. One looks for, as well as a band-aid (the kind that sticks to the skin) that can cover the wounds of the heart in one fell swoop. I still haven't found which pharmacy they sell it at. I would love to find the pharmacy or the cure, but I'm still on my search. The fact is that I think that since I was born, I have been locked in a kind of “Closet”. I say it's a species because mine is quite peculiar. I don't know if you have one too. In reality, I'm not sure if since I was born, I was so locked in the walls of my closet because at birth, as a baby, we are not yet contaminated with so many meaningless beliefs about the world, about ourselves. Inherited beliefs, beliefs perhaps from other lives or beliefs of beliefs. As soon as one begins to believe in something, the trials begin. Probably judgments full of fear, which become bigger when we give them importance. So, I don't know at what age I really went into the closet or the closet swallowed me with giant fangs. I don't remember the truth. A few years have passed, 43, that the confusion has been great. It could be that, as a child, when my fangs were just emerging from my gums, I stared at the closet in front of me in my room. The closet had a mirror and I was looking at my teeth. The closet and I had an exchange because his fangs caught me. AHA! There's the detail, it wasn't me who went into it. It was the gluttonous closet that ate me.



Once inside the closet, I started to see cloudy. When I was little, I wanted to be an artist but I forgot that... the closet began to dull my colors little by little, but I fought hard so that it didn't eat me up. It was a bamboo closet, the bamboo was already dry, but it had small cracks through which I could see out. I imagined a magical world, a fictional path of false romanticism, of great poets dancing to the rhythm of Shakespeare's melody. I saw a row of dreams in the distance, but I was trapped. I was filled with toxic positivism which fed my ego and my rebellion. I wanted to destroy the walls of that closet, but it was not an easy task. It was a shame to carry so much weight. I cried a lot, I acted strong, I swallowed thickly and poured alcohol on my wounds, but I didn't live through them. The wounds sometimes bled but I didn't have the pharmacy that sold the band-aids on hand. Then I learned to shut up, to hide, to lose hope. I was still locked in my own bonds, increasingly full of fears. I was still in the stupid closet. One day I couldn't take it anymore and I turned off my lights, lowered the blinds and gave up. I fell into a deep hole of despair and it was there, only there that the closet spat me out...


I still have saliva left over from that closet because I can still see it, but “I came out of the Closet.” I don't have the magic band-aid, nor have I danced with Shakespeare... yet... but now I cry in my own rivers and I'm glad to have water in my eyes. I am happy to share my vulnerability with me and with you. My back doesn't feel heavy anymore, although sometimes those silly beliefs from the past appear. I undone my hair; I'm no longer interested in seeing myself pretty in the mirror because that's pure bullshit. I bared my soul and my scars and instead of continuing to live in a utopia, it calms me to know that it is good to have gotten rid of the clouds that did not let me see clearly. Now I wear red glasses to see better. I hope the wolf doesn't eat me like he did with Little Red Riding Hood (I don't have the red cape, just my glasses)... because the closet can't do it anymore. After all he swallowed me, spit me out and taught me to be born again...

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