Crossroads:
Before all the before-times, there was nothing. But the I appeared suddenly out of that void, tearing through time and creating the moment.
And in this tale, it turns out the I is actually you—that’s life for you!
You begin to move forward; at first, everything is pure magic, and you see the world as a spectacle you can only be a part of. You’re like a song appearing between musical notes, or like a colour painting a sunrise.
Then, a lot of people begin to carelessly place their ideas and expectations onto you, and you start to grow and petrify—just a little, just enough to play your role.
However, the stage is demanding, and little by little, you learn to defend yourself from the vicissitudes of life. You resort to mechanisms, springs that activate when a new situation resembles an old one closely enough—one where you weren't allowed to be yourself because you had to respond to the ideas and expectations of others. Thanks to those springs and mechanisms, you know what to do.
You start to feel you are those mechanisms; you start to think that, somehow, they are your personality and that it is you who operates those levers, cranks, and compasses.
You walk on and reach a crossroad.
At this crossroad stands your family. No, you couldn't choose them, but—though you don't know it yet—you will be responsible for how you react to them. It seems almost like a trap because, to a large extent, you will learn "How to React to Things™" from your family.
At this fork, you choose your friends, another important part of that learning process. In retrospect, I can tell you that you’ve been lucky—but what would have become of you if you had gone with those others of darker hearts? Then there were those others, the ones who were very economically successful in life; what became of them?
You keep walking and, once again, you encounter several paths.
Here is the moment when you decide to stay in a relationship where you aren't treated well. In reality, this decision is made of a myriad of moments stretching out in a straight line before you. Do you have the tools and the knowledge to do something else? If you don't have them, is it truly a decision?
The rest of the paths seem like illusions: in that one, the same relationship lasts a very short time; in that other one, it seems you emigrate and emigrating with your partner works; and in the one further beyond, emigrating creates a resentment that destroys you both. Of course, in most of the branches, that partner doesn't even exist, and that time has perhaps been filled with other people or matters.
You look back with curiosity, but you stumble upon the moment that relationship ends. In some realities, you jump quickly into another relationship; in others, you suffer from depression, not knowing how to navigate the grief; and on this path you are walking, you question why you accepted that treatment.
Do you see? This other path is where you flee from your actions and their consequences because you cannot face the emotional cost of understanding yourself as a person who acted this way or that—as a person who did such a thing to others or did such a thing to themselves. If you follow it, the emotional consequences of this decision will splinter, and it will be very complicated to track them down to put the puzzle pieces back together.
Down that other path, you will focus primarily on your professional life, never stopping the search for people to accompany you on the way.
Down that lonely trail, you dive into your life but gradually lose sight of those who had walked with you.
Of course, there are complicated paths. If you go down that one over there, you will change; you will kill—metaphorically—part of who you are, and you will suffer—this time in a very literal sense. But you will change, after all, because the cost of suffering the change is lower than the cost of suffering everything that would happen if you didn't change.
Look, in one fork, your friends change with you. In others, they don't.
In many others, some do and some don't.
Evidently, you cannot choose any of that, so you don't choose.
Note that along this path you learn—at the cost of not betraying yourself—that your defense mechanisms weigh too much and serve too little. That there are people you have to let go. That learning to regulate your feelings in no way means repressing them or fleeing from them by thinking up excuses, hierarchies, and whatever narrative makes you feel better than others just because—whether it's that you’re better at this or that... you already know that lie.
The lie of the I.
It is only an inflammation of the ego, somewhat annoying, but it’s one of those illnesses that kills itself off, like a fever. The treatment: courage in abundance, surpassing the limits of the imagination and what is socially accepted. Later, when courage no longer even understands where that limit was, who put it there, or what time it opens: a little bit of chocolate.
But wake up, otherwise life is going to eat you up. Down that path, yes, you start to feel all the feelings, including the negative ones. Why would anyone submit themselves to such torture? But you gain clarity, and slowly, life hurts less. Those mechanisms and springs you called your personality fall away because they are no longer useful to you.
And the feelings begin to integrate into all those gaps left by the mechanisms that are no longer there. Suddenly, you glide through life by means of living, and you begin to dance with life.
The floorboards beneath your feet sound hollow.
Suddenly, others are dancing too.
The floorboards beneath their feet sound hollow.
They carry many survival mechanisms on their backs, but then again, who doesn't?
You stop in the middle of the stage; the spotlights blind you.
Then you look at the audience, but there is no one there.
In your hand is a mask; it is yours, your persona.
But that mask is made only of survival and familiarity, of fear and past.
And it doesn’t fit you anymore.
There are cracks in it, and you come with your own face—one that never had a name.
You take a bow.
And that is how masks fall: with a bow full of compassion for who we have been.
Canned applause plays, as if the sound came from an old, pre-recorded cassette tape.
"Who are you?" life asks you, speaking to you for some reason from the proscenium, perhaps interested.
The night ripples like a blanket spreading through the air and comes to a still, creating a landscape of black hills dotted with twinkling stars. There is a trail breaking through them, a moonbeam, marking a path that no one can travel, save for the night itself.
"Who are you?" life insists, expectant.
And your only answer is a question mark.
Crossroads © 2026 by Marta Roussel Perla is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/