Looking back

The story

Looking back

The dark side of every sentence John spoke always began from the absence of any perspective on his future. John had the misfortune of believing he had none. In his view, his past had never held the potential one would expect of someone in their early twenties. He lacked the strength to turn those thoughts around, and even more so the insight to pull himself through the most difficult and darkest period of his life.

He mostly looked back on moments in his past that never happened. He would think about the opportunities he had missed and the choices that had paralysed him. Leaving him unable to make decisions that had been necessary. He lacked courage, self-confidence and willpower. But he compensated for this with his imagination. He could spend hours wondering what things might have been like had he found the courage within himself.

He was desperate for someone to talk to, but found no one. This was what unhappiness looked like. When asked whether he thought he had missed out on a lot, his answer was much as one would have expected. “I wouldn’t say ‘everything’, but nothing else describes it better.” With the little energy he had at the beginning of each day, he attempted to live as he was supposed to. As he thought others expected him to. The fact that John himself felt he was only succeeding for a small part, added further pressure to every sense of failure. It would take many years before that dark fog in his mind began to lift.