Last Fri­day, we had to bury my grandma who died on the 23rd of August aged 85. Every­body includ­ing me was glad that she finally left this world after some years of suf­fer­ing. I wasn’t there in the end but every fam­ily mem­ber agreed that it’s good her suf­fer­ing finally stopped. Of course, I too am glad it’s over. The funeral was really some­thing, though. Lots of peo­ple and lots of flow­ers. I didn’t blend into the whole cer­e­mony although I played my part almost to per­fec­tion. It wasn’t much, just read­ing some sort of cur­ricu­lum vitae, which took me no more than four minutes.

From the very begin­ning I noticed how much I’ve changed and how much I resent some cus­toms still pop­u­lar with the peo­ple. But there has been a … shift in why peo­ple are cling­ing to their cus­toms. The old ones truly believe in what they do and there’s no deny­ing them. The younger peo­ple still fol­low the rules but only because it is expected. Some do not even believe in the things they do and say and oth­ers pick one or two suit­able things out of the whole crop and believe in them while dis­re­gard­ing the rest. As you can imag­ine, I did stick out because I stood apart. I had the guts to break with some cus­toms, thanks to my liv­ing apart from the peo­ple in my village.

For a sec­ond I thought about pleas­ing them, pre­tend­ing to be one of them. I dis­missed the thought shortly after because by doing so I’d for­ever be the grand­son of her. The son of my par­ents. I’d always have been mea­sured by their stan­dards and they wouldn’t have seen me as the per­son I am but rather the per­son I should be in their eyes. Stand­ing up to them by pub­licly demon­strat­ing that I honor their cus­toms but in the same time prov­ing that they aren’t mine meant much to me. Accord­ing to the sub­tle change in the peo­ple talk­ing to me, I did suc­ceed. I’m sad that it took such an occa­sion to make them understand.

Yah, back again. I even learned some new things, thus, I’m all the wiser now. You have to know that I’m not exactly the kinda guy who’s deep into fam­ily things. I appre­ci­ate my fam­ily and with some mem­bers – besides my par­ents and my sis­ter – I do have some kind of spe­cial bond. And that’s it. A huge part of my fam­ily I don’t know and nei­ther do I want to get them to know. You see, every­thing was quite fine until my grandpa died and every­body went crazy.

He left a con­sid­er­able amount of money as well as a nice flat. And that’s exactly where the whole story became damn ugly. One of his daugh­ters (there are three daugh­ters and one son – my mother being the eldest of all the sib­lings) who hap­pens to be my god­fa­ther and her hus­band became greedy and it ended in much anger on all sides. I won’t go into details but suf­fice to say that it’s been a hard time for my fam­ily (on my mother’s side only). How­ever, from that moment on noth­ing has ever been the same.

I don’t know my aunts any more. They have changed way too much. Or is it me? I don’t know but I don’t believe the lat­ter. Of course I’ve changed. Change is the only con­stant in life. I don’t seem to know them at all. My uncle’s sum­mon­ing this week­end only proved that I can still talk to them but most are strangers to me. Actu­ally, I’m glad I moved from home to a city far away. They’re totally immersed in their small coun­try life and they don’t care about other things all that much. Sure, they talk about pol­i­tics and other mat­ters of pub­lic inter­est but in the end noth­ing mat­ters greatly to them. They fol­low the cus­toms as usual and they pre­tend to be good peo­ple by doing what the pub­lic expects them to do.

I don’t fit into such a life. I ques­tion and crit­i­cize, I’m skep­tic and I don’t take every­thing as it is. I’m not sat­is­fied with an exis­tence like that. Life has so many things in store for every­one of us I just can’t be sat­is­fied liv­ing in a small vil­lage pre­tend­ing there’s no other place I’d like to know. I won’t give up my dreams for noth­ing. I’ve got huge expec­ta­tions I’d like to live up to. I think, that atti­tude has widened the gap that has always existed between me and the rest of them.

I’m alone in this world. I don’t pre­tend. I accept things they don’t. They know most things I do but they pre­fer to deceive them­selves. Every crea­ture on this earth dies alone. I know because I’ve seen it hap­pen many times and I almost expe­ri­enced it myself. I’d rather face real­ity than make a farce of it for the sake of feel­ing bet­ter this way. It doesn’t hurt any­more like it did a decade ago. I’ve grown used to this soli­tude. Ah, enough of that. Every mus­cle hurts and I don’t wanna write anymore.