It was my birthday. Laura brought the kids out back, where they played and ran. Her gaze was on the lush green weeds, walking barefoot like the kids, primal and free. Standing at the window, smoking my cigarette and watching my wife, my children, my garden, my dog, my life, true and raw, and right there in front of me, there was not a pair of eyes on me. None. Nobody. It was my vision of a life I saw when I was a child and it was a reality that was so unbelievably true right there in front of me, that I almost missed the beauty of that moment.
“What is your wish Jack?”, Laura smiled. And I saw through her. “I am not wishing anymore.”, I said, “I have everything I need.”
Laura kissed my cheek and her moist lips send love, sailing over my skin to my heart. It’s when I realized, that losing what was killing me, that standing up tall and for the first time ever staring death in its cold eyes and telling that bastard: “You can’t kill me, I am ready to die!”, saved my sad, twisted and depressingly narcissistic life. I had become a man. A man that lives without anybody noticing. That doesn’t seek validation by performing. That can quietly sit in a small room and be perfectly fine with his own thoughts, a cigar, and a glass of wine.
I was who I wanted to be and who I was too afraid to become.
And that’s it.
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