What I'm like

I moved quickly to a set of double doors, opened them and stepped into the darkness of the auditorium.

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[...]

I hesitate. But I am determined after a moment and step forward.

I step up to the stone. I place my hand around the handle and begin to pull. The sword starts to come out.

The villagers gasp.

I raise the shiny sword out of the stone and high above my head.

Everyone on stage bows.

A silence fills the auditorium.

The villagers rise and rush to me. They scoop me up and carry me around the stage in celebration. I chuckle and then laugh as the group of six-year-olds try unsuccessfully to keep me up. We slowly sag and then collapse. We are all laughing as we try to untangle ourselves.

I become indistinguishable among a group of twenty children giggling and enjoying themselves on stage.

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[...]

I happened to see this distant self when I volunteered my services some days ago. I was helping my kindergarten hold a fund-raising event, in which some young kids had to perform a costume drama. Although the play and the characters were different, the auditorium was the same - both geographically and psychologically.

This piece of memory is intact and it will remain so even if I do not have a photograph of my performance back then.
Others, even if you still have a vivid picture showing either what you were doing or what you were like, you’d rather deny it.

Our memory is highly selective.

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[...]

For all the grieving I had been through [...], I look immaculate to even my intimate friends. I can avidly talk about my current life and future plans with them, but when the dialogue turns towards those days, ‘the dark age’, as I call it, I immediately - and quite visibly - steel myself, as though I knew the moment might arise.

My eyes drift away from my friends. I look across and apologise, while the [...].

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “Don’t mention it, please. It’s just too painful for me.” 

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Never have I put it this way before but I know it’s true: It was me who consciously and willingly gave up all my ‘talents’. It was me who chose to let go. And it was me who determined how others were going to see me. And if I were to be put right in front of the fulcrum point now, I know, I would once again opt against the other possible paths and would never feel sorry because of my same ‘blunder’ and its foreseeable, undesirable consequences.