Always limped behind

Well, I slipped into it again, as I have so many times before. It was a good friend's 30th birthday, and I just didn’t want to be rude. Or at least, that’s the lie I’ll use this time to make it digestible — for me and for everyone else, should they point fingers at it. At the fact that I told them, wrote about it, proclaimed it, preached it like gospel: “I will never do it again! ” I lied. I pretended. And here I am at step one again. Ground zero. The bottom. Not rock bottom yet, but fairly close.

Last month, my body couldn’t take it anymore, so I had to stop. Two weeks went by, and it finally started to heal. I felt better. I felt good. And there I stood that one April evening. Face bent down over that little liquor table in my parents’ empty apartment. Competing in a staredown battle once again. At half past eleven, we locked eyes. The crystal demons stared back at me, and I listened to their whispers. That unsatisfiable thirst slowly grew inside me. Its haze filled the room. I knew it was flee or fail from the moment I put my key in the door lock. I knew. I clenched the car keys in one hand and that crystal glass in the other. Till my palms turned white. Fight or surrender? Run away or stay for a little while? Well, I did what I am best known for, and after a little while, I just gave in.

It’s hard to admit to yourself that you are just not one of them. I never quite could. Since childhood, I refused. They are not better than me, are they? So why shouldn’t I handle the things they do with the same ease? “You are normal.” Like a siren song, I made myself believe it. I left the crutches in the distance and limped behind the crowd, out of breath and angry.

It was a different battle back then. I don’t even know how many there were — dyslexia, dysmorphia, a slower pace. I hated every syllable of it. It burned like a label tattooed onto my forehead. This one is broken, it read. Let’s give him crutches so he can limp behind the crowd. Standing out like a black sheep in a sea of white wool. Let’s tell everyone publicly, loudly, so they know. This one is not like the rest of you. He’s different. And not in a good way.

And so there was more time for this, fewer grammar exercises there, no grading on this, no grading on that, good jobs when I returned a blank sheet of paper. Shake of a hand, pat on a back. Like an ugly duckling, I felt the shame. I felt the failure in every I/Y I had to fill in instead of writing the entire dictation exercise, like the rest of the class. In every knock on the door when they called the broken one out. “Your wizard class starts now.” That’s how it began — mockery, or at least that’s what it felt like. The whole class laughed at me with their eyes. The whole school. The whole world.

“How was your wizard class today?” my mother used to ask. How ridiculous that sounded. Like I was special, like I was gifted. No, I was not. I was normal. I held onto that belief with a deadly grip. And so I threw the crutches away and tried to hide in the crowd. But I had to take two steps where others took one. With every little misspelling, every grammar error, I felt the rush where others stood still. Through sheer relentlessness, tired and worn down, I somehow managed to keep up.

Later on, I grew weary of the rush, so I figured out a different kind of mimicry. I became lazy, the one who didn’t care about school, always late or absent, sleeping in class, joking around. Too good for school. Not normal again, but this time in a cool way. Or so I thought. In my mind, I was the cool one now, the special one. I wore it like armor, impenetrable, adding another plate to it with every step. Still one of the herd. Not the black sheep. Or perhaps I lied to myself again.

And my slacking and lacking were no different from the wizardry after all. Perhaps their eyes still laughed at me. I just couldn’t hear them this time.

As I moved through life, I desperately hung on to this image. And cool guys always have that glass in their hand, don’t they? What cool guy has no beer in his hand at parties? Doesn’t talk to women in bars? Doesn’t participate in the silliness of the Friday nights? What cool guy has no drunken stories to tell? not this one. So I drank and laughed and jumped on the roofs of the dormitory when the whole world spun around. Began as fun, but as life rushed forward, the same old battle appeared. I limped behind again.

I was supposed to become a man, not a boy anymore. Not a drunken Peter Pan. For that is a wizardly thing, isn’t it? Something different, and not in a good way. And I am normal. I am not that other kind, so why am I limping in the distance again? Why am I drunk again? Why not just one bottle, but three? Why not just one day, but three?

Yet people drink, right? They do. They don’t stand at a winery singing “Happy Birthday” with mineral water in hand. They don’t refuse the collective trip to the bar to burn down their throats with golden liquid. In celebration. As a sign of unity.

I can do that too. I can do more than two. More than two days a week, more than two shots at once. Way more. I can’t fight it. In my life, they don’t come alone, but in a herd. The longer I tried, the more tired I got. The more I limped as I desperately tried to be part of that group. For I am the normal one, am I not? I am a special one, the different one. The room sees it. The people see it. The world sees it.

I erased the old label, but a new one is slowly forming now. I’m not sure what it reads yet. Nobody is, but it starts with an “A”. What will follow? Whatever it will be, it will earn the silent judgmental eyes once again, that is certain. What for, though, that one is up to me.

“What would you like to drink, sir?” the waiter with silent eyes asks. It’s early afternoon as I write this line, in a summer garden at the center of Prague. Tourists from all around the world have taken the city by storm again, at the brink of the first sunny day of spring. Flocks of them and flocks of those city birds that guard the city of a thousand towers. Grey and silver and always on alert. Unafraid and bold. “So what will it be? Or should I come later?”

I waved her off with a smile. “Just a minute, just a moment.” I have to decide now, or it will slip through my fingers again. So what will it be? And what will the label read? Water or whiskey? I don’t know the answer yet; the flock of pigeons just flew away from the sun-warmed pavement of the Old Town Square. Not caring to be normal, for they are different and always were.