As the light stood upright, breaking in through the window in shades and power, as the cars parked on the street began to stir and hum again, as lovers turned in their beds from side to side, and the staircase filled with the sound of another day's labor, I sat at my desk. Two days without sleep. Four hours without water. And the burden of another long day ahead of me. A day I would spend trying to decide what was mine to carry, what I must leave behind, and what I must pick up again and again, until the tree in the backyard blooms.

I remember something from some time ago, when I ran away from home, boarded a bus, and put distance between myself and the embrace of my mother, the eyes of my siblings. I left because I could not bear to let them witness the cloud that settles over a man still struggling to find his way. I left because I was in the middle of nowhere, even if the road ahead seemed beautiful. It carried its thorns. And only when you begin to walk such a road do you learn it is littered with calamities. It’s on these roads you learn why many had turned back. Why many more had left the road of their own lives to walk another’s—one that promised safety.

I left them, as I said, because the shame of a man trying to keep his head above water is a quiet devastation. There was nothing I could say. Nothing I could do that would redeem me. And I, for my part, did not want to use the love they had for me as a shield against the uncertainty over my life.

So I left, and found myself among many men. Men who spoke often and did little. Men who prayed for change but would not move their feet nor put their hands to the earth. Men who believed in love but had nothing of their own souls to give it. Men who cursed the government with conviction, but in their eyes, you could see if they ever reached those corridors, they would do far worse.

I settled among these men, and at the same time, I removed myself from them, because I wasn't bound to carry their definition of the world as my conviction. And even then, and now, as time changes but reality still remains the same, the harder question was always this: can a man truly live with himself? Can he dance alone, without a lover, without a friend, without the murmurs of family behind the doorframe saying they are proud?

But I knew. I settled into myself. And I danced to the music, no matter where it came from, even when the lyrics were sad.