Swimming in the Dark

by Tomasz Jedrowski

Some things cannot be erased through silence.

It was as if there were a wall separating me from the other boys, one I hadn’t seen before but which was now clear and irreversible.

I had always liked the act of leaving, the expanse between departure and arrival when you’re seemingly nowhere, defined by another kind of time.

But like stones thrown into the sky with all one’s might, pieces of that night—the boys and the men who wanted them, the flirtation, the codes of seduction I could only guess at—returned to me with even greater intensity than I had lived them. The law of gravity applies to memories too.

I allowed the union between the earth and my body, I let go, and for the first time in my life I appreciated everything for what it was, observed the miracle of it. The earth for being the earth, my hands for being my hands, the plants for growing out of seeds, and the others around me, everyone, with their own rights and dreams and interior worlds.

It struck me how little my name meant to me, how absurd it was in its attempt to contain me.

I was paralyzed by possibility, caught between the vertigo of fulfilment and the abyss of uncertainty.

In a way these felt like the first days of my life, as if I’d been born by that lake and its water and you.

No matter what happens in the world, however brutal or dystopian a thing, not all is lost if there are people out there risking themselves to document it. Little sparks cause fires too.

I ignored him when he turned aggressive and called me a pervert and a sick fuck. To my own surprise, I was unable to accept the shame he wanted me to feel. It was too familiar to be imposed: I had produced it myself for such a long time that, right then, I found I had no space left for it anymore.

And yet, it occurs to me now that we can never run with our lies indefinitely. Sooner or later we are forced to confront their darkness. We can choose the when, not the if. And the longer we wait, the more painful and uncertain it will be.

Did we even believe that we deserved to get away with happiness?

When really, the familiar had already turned alien, and home had ceased being home. Both have gone on living and changing without me.