Memory of Living

This is a memory:

The audience was quiet, waiting for me to start. They were a collective group of senior high school students. Some of them my friends, some of them I barely knew. But we had all grown up together, and there’s no changing that. No matter who was weird, cool, or crazy.

The classroom was a small square room on the second level. The desks were pulled into a circular fashion.

I grabbed a chair, placed it in the center of that circle, so I could see every eye, make sure they could all see me.

This was a moment I had been waiting for a moment to show I was good at something.

Our final year, our final class presentation, and I had decided it was fitting, for my persona as so I portrayed, to present a monologue; which for years, had consumed me in its bitter regret, and beautiful words.

I explained the situation : A man in jail, being asked :  have you been rehabilitated? What a question.

I sat down, looked at the audience and began. What I felt was the moment, not only the words I spoke but the deep regret I felt in my own life sure I wasn’t a man in jail, but there were many things I felt at the time needed to be redeemed within me, many things I had done wrong.

When I spoke the words, they came from a place of truth, they came from that place deep inside of me which I cannot say is from the heart or the brain but something else, something utterly human.

Everyone in that room was silent listening, watching, but I didn’t notice them not really, because I was in the moment, in that scene, I was the character and for the first time in my life I didn’t care about what people thought of me if they thought I was hot or ugly, or crazy or fun, dramatic, all the old connotations dropped when I became the character.

The last line,

I look up at every person make sure my eyes reach as many as possible

make sure they see the regret written in every part of my face.

When I  finish there is a silence for a minute,

and then everyone starts to clap.

It’s been many years,

but if I go back into that memory

I can remember what it means to be alive.