Beyond the skies lies Infinity

Written by

Jorge Alfaro Ramírez

Since the car accident I don't feel the same, maybe because she doesn't either. At the cafeteria she didn't even say hi to me, I guess she was ashamed by how I acted that night, and I wouldn't blame her if it was like that, I've never been so ashamed of something in my life. I mean, I would do anything to change what happened, anything.

Now I'm here, all alone, sitting in the middle of the football field, drinking a bottle of cheap wine, wondering how everything fell apart so quick.

I should explain a little bit what happened that night, the night of the crash, the night that Peter left us to go to Infinity. I had just broken up with Lucy and a week later we were on our finals and our SATS, I had a lot to think about. While studying a lot, reading books, learning about some things that I didn’t knew because I was distracted in class or maybe something else occurred while I should’ve been learning, I was thinking about her, about if I took the right judgment with her. I was invited by some college kids to a party (more or less), and I was kind of unpopular, but Peter wasn’t. He was everyone’s friend, everybody loved Peter, and these kids invited him, not me. But he had such a great heart that decided to take me, this was my first college party ever, and I wanted to be special, with my best bud Peter. I still thought if going to the party was the right choice, you know, because I was on my final exams and all. I really needed good grades if I wanted to enter NYU, and that was without counting what my parents will do to me if they knew I had been partying and drinking and all. I had just received my driving license, so I thought that if I drove with Peter into the party we will look cool, like the college guys do. And so I took my Cousin Sam’s car to the party. Still, I was worried about the SATS and the finals, but I didn’t care, I just went there with Peter, thinking we would’ve had a great time together... worst decision I’ve ever made.

Let me make this clear, before you judge me; this wasn’t me. I didn’t have this life. I was just a regular guy with a regular high school life and a regular girlfriend. But she got caught on the illusion of being a “cool kid”, just as what was happening to me. With that being said, you can probably imagine what happened next…

The college kids that invited Peter started doing these crazy drinking games, and Peter wanted me to join in, you know, to be part of the spirit and the party soul and he also said some other stuff that I can’t remember right now because of all the alcohol that I had in my veins that day. Later on, I was on a tree house that was built in the backyard of the house in which the party was taking place. It was not as lousy as the party, and I could check my phone in case of an emergency call I missed or something that could come up while I was with Peter. And indeed, I had a message from an unknown number. It was a picture of Lucy in another party, cheating on me with other guy, or at least that was what seemed to me. Remember that I was drunk and maybe I could’ve seen something different, but I’m pretty sure of what I saw, and the fact that she didn’t say anything like, refuting that the photo was real, made me think more about what I saw in my phone that night. I remember that I told Peter that I was so hyped up about the party that I wanted to drive and that I was just, filled with energy. That I just wanted to drive fast and get out of that heat and that lousy bass music that the DJ was playing. He jumped into the car and I started driving very, very fast. To the point that if I wanted to break, I would've had to hit something. I was raging and I was furious with the picture, that I just wanted to, I don’t know, disconnect me from the whole world, disconnect me from my stress about the high school, remembering that I had studied nothing for my SATS, disconnect me from my stupid position that night, my position of proving I was someone “cool”, someone I’m not, just to be part of the cool kids and… I just pressed down the accelerator, as hard as I could, to fly, to fly out of there and go back to normal. I just, closed my eyes… I remember that in the radio the host was playing Don’t Go Away by Oasis, that song got stuck into my head after that.

And in a glimpse of an eye, I crashed into a local food establishment, sending Peter to Infinity, and myself to an eternal doom, even though I didn’t knew back then. You may wonder now, what is this “Infinity” thing I’ve said now a couple of times? It’s a little peculiar, but it's my more vivid memory about my father. I grew up in a catholic family, and my father always used to tell me that “Infinity” was this place to which good people go, after leaving this place. He talked so beautifully about life… ahh! You should’ve heard my mom telling us about him, she loved him with all her heart. Even until his last second in this world, right before going to Infinity, she was there with him, supporting, loving, caring, protecting, saving, and blessing him. He died when I was seven years old, but I still can remember, that was what he used to tell me. He also told us stories about angels, how they live in Infinity, but he also told us this lesson: he told us how even an angel can fall to an eternal doom if it chooses the wrong path in life. I chose wrong that day…

It's been one month since I broke up with Lucy, I guess this, this that I’m feeling is part of the whole package right? She was something really special and unique, but, at the same time, she was just like everything else. But still, I keep looking around, and I can't find someone nearly as beautiful as what she was for me. Sometimes I wonder, what is wrong with me? Why did I let her go if I'm saying right now how beautiful she was, how unique and special everything was?

I guess it's because I have issues, you know, I keep having trouble with maintaining long lasting relationships. And not just the boyfriend-girlfriend type of relationships, I mean just normal relationships, with normal friends, normal people. And it's harder every time. I think people can’t really see what they have, even if it’s right between their eyes.

Even if I wanted to have a long lasting relationship with someone, anyone, something always keeps getting in the way. Some love life issues, or family issues, or something else. Something always comes up. Everybody has issues, with most of the things in life. Especially if you have my age. You think that life always punishes you for everything that you do.

All these things keep popping into your head like if your mind was a factory of misleading and head-aching thoughts. Like if you wanted to feel sad sometimes, like if you needed that sadness. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that is true. That affected me the night of the crash. We can't always be happy, we need that sadness, we need that balance between what makes us feel alive and great, and what makes us scratch our face and cry. This is my life.

Later that day, at the football field, she talked to me:

-I knew I’d find you, you’re always here if something bad happens. I needed to talk to you...

-Sure, what happened? How are you feeling?

-I'm okay… I guess, it’s just not the same without Peter around, you know. I miss him, Walt.

-Me too. A lot. You know he was my best friend, well, my only one actually.

-I know, I just, really miss him and I can't stand that he's gone.

-Me too... I wish I could change that night… I was so filled with rage and anger and frustration, I couldn't control myself… Lucy, I killed him, I killed Peter! I hate myself so much right now. And you know what the worst part is? That I've got nobody, nobody in my life. Everything went downhill since that day…

-You got me. Peter would want us to stick together, you know that…

-Really, after all that happened that day, you still care about me?

-Always, Walt.

In the next days, I realized that a lot of people hide their real character. Some are just ashamed of people knowing how they really are, they are happy with their normal life, even though they're not being themselves. Maybe they like literature, but their friends like video games and parties. A lot of problems come to my mind when I think of people hiding their real beings, their real personalities. I think that's how they suffer. They're lying about who they are, what they do and what they feel. There are some feelings or thoughts that you shouldn't hide, that you should express and feel, that you should learn to live with. You should be yourself and never adapt to something else if it makes you uncomfortable. I wasn’t being myself that night, neither do Lucy.

I just, wish Peter was here, he would understand, he would know I’m not a bad guy, I don’t go to parties, I don’t drive drunk and angry. But some way, somehow, everything that wasn’t going to happen, actually happened that night.

This is out of topic, but I always liked this quote from the movie Forrest Gump: “Mama always said… dying was a part of life. I sure wish it wasn’t. I miss you, Jenny”.

I miss you Peter.

After that day, everybody was disgusted by how I acted that night, even people that never had seen me before, hated me. I was the most hated person in the entire school. You know how hard that is, to have sixteen and to be hated by seven hundred other students? Hell, even the neighbors hated me, because of Peter and because I trashed their favorite taco establishment in town.

His family was really compassionate and kind with me, knowing that he’s not here because of me… I thought they were going to kill me and at this point I kind of wish they had. In later days I went through a phase. I started sleeping a lot less, my grades went downhill, together with my chance of getting into NYU, I started to feel really depressed, even though I had my parents support, I wished that earth have swallowed me. My whole life was in a black hole, being absorbed by it.

But then something happened. Remember I told you about Lucy talking to me in the football field? Well, that was the day that my life changed completely from how it was, to how it is now. I really understood how lonely a person can be, even if it has seven hundred people around. I knew I had to change, I knew I had to face my troubles and give my best face to them.

The next day I went to church with Lucy, she suggested that I should go, and I knew I should, I knew I had to talk to Him before doing this, He would listen to me:

-Hey, Lord, ammm, I’ve been away from your house lately and I’ve been doing awful things. Things I’m not proud of. I’ve been trying to be someone that I’m not. I’ve been trying to have things that I don’t have, just because I see others with those same things and they look happier than me, just because of superficial and fake reasons. Just because I wanted something else to give my life some emotion, something else to make it different. I know it’s bad, I know that I shouldn’t have done it, but, at the time, I felt alive. But after that, everything was fake and it just brought in more troubles, with Lucy, with my best and only friend, Peter, with my family. My whole life is in a deep doom right now. But I know I have to make things right, so I started by coming here to talk to you, because I knew that you would listen to me.

The next thing I did was to go to my house and think about what could I do to improve my situation and, I don’t know why, but I thought of my dad when I was in this thinking time.

I talked to my mom, to learn a little bit more about him, and maybe I could learn something from him that potentially would help me. I told her about how was I feeling and I also told her about the hard time I was having. She didn’t say anything, she just handled me a book. A brown, hard-covered and dusty book and she just said -“Read it”. When I opened it, on the first page there was something written:

“For those who dream beyond their limits, beyond what is expected of them and for those who live in what’s beyond the skies, the Infinity of joy, this is for you, cheers!

-O.”

I was weird out by this book, it was just brown and dusty and didn’t even have a title. And my mother was never like that, she was a little more talkative. This time she just handled me the book and said -“Read it”. I didn’t put my mind onto that, I just read the book as my mother told me to. I was just wondering who was “O”. My dad’s name was Simon, so, this wasn’t him. My mom’s name is Rose and my brother’s name is Richard. Nobody’s initial is O. But I elude it and started reading:

"Have you ever had that feeling of not knowing where you are, of not knowing where you should be in this world, where do you belong? Well, I did. I was this geeky kid with just a couple of friends, my other geeky friends, average qualifications in school, who knows almost everything about Star Wars and doesn't give a shit about being popular, or being in the school football team. I was happy with my life, you know, I didn't have much to take or give to life. And you can basically figure out why I didn't want to be cool or in the football team, yeah, they were all bullies. I was bullied. A lot. Everywhere. It was a really hard time for me and my friends Chris and George (my other geeky friends).

But, I understood soon enough that I didn't want to be cool or popular as they were called, they were just mean, and they just put us down for them to feel big or confident enough to be called "popular kids". I guess the price was high, because after we got out of high school, I kept my friends, but the guys that kept bullying me, were living in a trailer park, with no friends, no job, no family, no "popularity", no nothing. I'm not saying that if you are popular you are definitively going to be mean with others and you're going to end up alone, but for them, that was the case. I understood soon enough that doing other stuff just for people to notice you is a waste of time, especially if you have a good life, with friends, with a family that cares about you and loves you, with good grades, a good future with happiness in it. It doesn't have to be necessarily a huge, exiting life to be memorable.

You can make it as memorable as what you want it to be. I have really good memories of when we went down my parent’s basement and just watched Star Wars with our sodas and our popcorn... homemade of course. We used to play video games too in Chris' NES. We used to play this game in which the three of us had to play Mario Bros, and every time you died you had to eat a marshmallow. But you didn't chew it, you just put it in your mouth to see how many you could handle and to see how good you were in Mario Bros. It was really fun!

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that you don't have to be a jerk to have a memorable life. We were happy, in our own way. And I think that my life couldn't have been much more memorable and worthy. I love my life and I know I chose right. I know I did. You know why? Because I'm still happy with it. I still enjoy every single little minute and detail about life. After school I had to watch a couple of friends go to Infinity--"

When I saw that, I said -"Wait, this guy "O" knew what Infinity was? Who is this guy anyway?". I didn't try to solve some mystery about why this guy knew Infinity, but still, I was very intrigued. I was really loving this book, because it adapted in some way to what I was living... I knew my mom was more talkative, she just wanted me to realize what she was trying to tell me, through this book. And so, I kept reading:

"...they were good friends. Real friends. And they meant so much to me, I still remember all of those things we used to do together. At my house, in the church, in the community fair. And, after seeing that they went to Infinity, I really understood what my grandfather used to tell me: that Infinity was a place reserved for good people, people who care about others, people who love and share what they have. Good people that serve and pray, and don't matter to filth their hands for others to don't have to filth theirs. A place reserved for good and loyal friends, for family, for all the good people.

I was amazed with that place, and I knew that at my 59 years of living, and with my heart cancer, Infinity was right around the corner, and I could not be happier with that. I hope that this confession helps someone, even if it’s just one person, to realize that life is not about being noticed or being remembered, is about you to be satisfied with what you did in this world, to say at the end: everything was worth it. To know that you did good work in this place and to know that you helped others that needed you and that you never lost the faith in them, neither the faith in you. To know that you had a good life with a good family and good friends to support you and care about you. And finally, to know, deep in your heart, that with all of those good things that you did, Infinity is your home sweet home."

I was just amazed with what I just read. I went running to my mom, asking her about who was this "O" guy. She told me that O stands for Oswald, and Oswald was the nickname that my father had when he was working at the church. One of the things that I knew about my dad it was his obsession with Disney characters, and Oswald in particular. If you don't know who Oswald was in the Disney universe, Oswald was this bunny-looking character that was introduced before Mickey Mouse took the leading role in the company, he was a very charismatic and lovely character that my father used to love. At that moment I realized why my name was Walt. It was kind of ironic.

But besides that, I got it. That was my dad's last confession! And every page, every word I read, told me what to do. This changed everything.

I couldn't change what happened, but I could change my future. I got up from my dark life, cleaned up my tears and looked up. I started to raise my grades in school and started, again, my path to NYU. I ended up with a degree and later on, I went to NYU and studied psychology where I graduated with really good grades and got my degree and my PhD. After that, I knew exactly where I wanted to work: a school. This is where people lost themselves and don't know what to do, like what happened to me, because they don't have someone to advise them. And, sometimes what you need is just someone to trust you, to care about you and your life. That's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be that person and help those kids that need some advice and need someone to talk to and listen to them I wanted to put them in the right path, and in that way, fix what I did to Peter and fix what I did to my life, something that almost destroyed me, something that almost stopped me from having the beautiful life that I have now. It’s 2015 and I'm thirty four now. I’ve been working at Emma Lazarus School in Manhattan as a counselor for kids who need help with problems in their lives. It has been such an amazing and fulfilling job, and I could not be happier with what I did after what happened. I keep remembering that day, the day that I drove into the food establishment, the day that Peter died… and I cry. But I also smile, because I remember him, how he was, he was such a nice guy with everyone, he cared about other people's lives, he always knew what to say and what to do, he was my only friend, a wonderful person, a one of a kind friend that you only see once in your life, and he came into my life to teach me a lesson, to make me see what happens to people who take the wrong way in life, to make me see that I'm bigger than this, that I can do much better in life. With the years going by, I realized that one of the happiest moments in life is when you find the courage to let go of what you can't change. You know, I've been wishing that day didn't happen, I've been missing Peter every single day since he passed away. But I know that he is happy there, I know that he is in that place, smiling to see that I never gave up and I'm fixing what I did, somewhere up in that magical and special place beyond the skies: Infinity.