I have seen many men in destruction: with eyes broken like a stoned window; who do not lift their heads and seem all the time like something has fallen to the ground—was it a heavy burden? The will to go on? The ID photo she gave him as a keepsake before leaving? Others walk around with their bottle of aguardiente in their back pocket and every so often take a swig, making a face that is indistinguishable between guilt or relief.
I have seen many destroyed men, turned into rags: so little that if you blow on them, you send them flying; who could take no more and hung themselves from the guava tree in the yard, who slit their wrists open; who did manage, but do not know what to do with so much pain that eats away at their insides like cancer.
I have seen many men destroy themselves and already destroyed; however, I believe that only once have I seen someone who carries within him both states. The other day a young man, no older than 25, collapsed on the threshold in front of my house.
This is not the collapse of drunks losing their balance and falling; this is deeper, as if he had forgotten how to stand. When he sat down, his head suddenly went askew. His glasses slipped off his face. He dropped the lighter, and the cigarette he was trying to light could no longer be held between his lips. His brain was in blackout. His body felt foreign to him, as if it belonged to someone else.
“The chemical is destroying people,” my mother tells me as we watch the scene. Perhaps it wasn’t the chemical at all; however, his vacant face, his muscles like orange jelly resembled too closely the videos circulating on social media about the effects of this drug.
My first thought was to ask what he was running from. What fear, what dissatisfaction, what pain could lead a person to risk such an escape? He was not just escaping reality; he was grinding it down. He was pulverizing it like crystals. In that state, he could commit any act, from assaulting a stranger to harming himself. Nothing mattered because everything felt light.
Beware, young people who believe that one must experience everything in the world: lights, dizziness, ecstasy. The most toxic relationships begin with a slight flirtation. Those who want to leave—leave themselves, the neighborhood, the dysfunctional family—be cautious that there are “easy” exits more dangerous than any captivity. Moreover, we must learn to confront problems, not to push them aside as if they weren’t there, as if we weren’t there.
I thought about approaching the boy on the threshold, to see if I could help him with anything. To offer him my shoulder so he could stand up, pick up his glasses, light the cigarette. However, I feared his reaction. I didn’t know what might be going through his mind or worse, if it was blank and he would act on impulse rather than reflection. Everything consumed on the Internet, so many videos of people “on chemicals” doing the unbelievable—not for miraculous reasons but for being strange and unexpected. I confess that my doubts outweighed the good Samaritan I wish I had within me.
As I decided whether to help him, he came back to himself a little. With difficulty, he managed to get up. He grabbed his glasses and the lighter. The cigarette remained on the ground. With dead steps, he moved toward the end of the block. He would continue like this, aimlessly, until he collapsed on the next threshold or until the next blackout hit him. There he went, destroyed and in the process of destroying himself.
