JOSÉ LUIS LÓPEZ

 

 

Toxic Jealousy

 

Do you know why I'm toxically jealous?

Do you know why I can't stop thinking about it?

Do you know why you're insecure?

Do you know why I don't see you as normal?

 

Because you're nobody, because you're uneducated, because everything you do and think, I'll know. Because you try to escape or do something secretly, I'll discover it. Because you're somebody when I possess you, you're exclusively my property.

 

If you've seen that I don't see you, because if you've had the opportunity to go out so I don't know your presence or where you're going to live, if you've tried to evade my feelings or try to block my contacts, I'll know.

 

Because there are people like me who snoop, pursue, compare, and influence. I will know how your entire life works. I will uncover everything that has happened in your life. I will tame your life because you will always be my exclusive property.

 

Yes, I am toxic jealous.

Because I don't have to make you love, I don't have to think about its existence, I don't have to think about causing panic and pain in your life, because there is no longer any security for you to rest because you will have no freedom anywhere or time, because I can manipulate everything whenever I want, whenever I feel pleasure because you are my exclusive property.

 

Yes, I am toxic jealous.

Because I don't have to give love. That means nothing because I control a lot of the people I want to possess. I am of great value to everyone because I like everything, everything gives me value, everything exalts me. Everything is what I provoke because I have the power to build and destroy as I wish, and I am unstoppable.

 

Yes, I am toxic jealous.

I'm calling you. I'll let you know when I go to where you are, because no one can speak or say anything because I control everything that happens and is said.

 

Yes, I am toxically jealous. When you're my property, there's nothing left to live for, or anyone who decides to escape, because I'll know how to get what belongs to me.

 

Someone I Never Was

 

Remembering last night that I had to reflect on what I was going to do with myself. And I had to remember from the moment I came into the world.

 

Was I someone at that moment?

Honestly, no. I was always a stumbling block for my family, even at birth. I was the product of an affair from which I was undesirable, and who would not be registered because I was an illegitimate child, lacking identity, and being a bastard.

 

Being an adult's mistake, I had to pay the price for not being able to have a baptism, to which I had no right because I didn't come from a functional family. If I felt undervalued before, I continue to live the same way, because the new generation can't make an intelligent deduction.

 

Being raised by an older family, because Mom could never start a new family because she was an illegitimate child, because the person who made her a mother humiliated her and decided to discard her. That's how I experienced it, the same way Mom did.

 

I searched for that identity I never had, but everything was obvious, I wasn't valued, and I was a victim of family bullying because I wasn't seen as a man, but I didn't feel like a man. I did like doing women's things and played girls' games. However, what I could accomplish as an individual was insignificant to me.

 

I came to understand that I no longer had any value anywhere, and I had to create my own circus of bullying to be acceptable. I always loved being with girls and was rejected by boys. All the games I liked were for girls, and I disliked everything about boys.

 

And yes, I thought about falling into delinquency, and I even vandalized public telephones, and I was punished by being expelled from school. Yes, my foster grandparents had to intervene because Mom had no control over my upbringing. We were behaviorally difficult.

 

Tragically, I had to be the victim of sexual harassment by a man, and I felt so good about myself that it provoked what I never should have been: homosexual, as a minor. Yes, I was punished because Mom got that individual fired from his job, but at home I was despised for having instigated the incident.

 

Was psychological help suggested to me? I never wanted it because it wasn't relevant to cover up an existence that had already arrived prematurely. So I kept quiet and accepted my new life.

 

Someone I never was. Everything is a process each person must acquire to acquire the experience of being an authentic thought of some ordinary individual who had no intention of coming into the world and who, due to the missteps of adults, was given an unfinished and irreplaceable life.

 

JOSÉ LUIS LÓPEZ