What do you see in the mirror?

Shut in my house because of the excessive heat outside, I go to the bathroom in the semi darkness.

While I clean my face, in the mirror I meet an old man who looks at me and asks for something. Someone who wants to give a sense to these days that fall somewhere.

— Look at you. What do you see in the mirror? 

One and a half years ago I woke up in an emergency room at night. A doctor told me I had a brain tumor. I needed to be operated on as soon as possible. 

It was 3:26 a.m. on February 18, 2023.

I spent the following two weeks in the hospital waiting for the operating room to be free for six hours. Removing the brain tumor was a long and complex operation.

Moreover, the doctors needed to have enough time in case things went wrong. The biggest risk was that I would lose the motor area of my legs. In fact, the tumor was located in that part of the brain. The main artery in that area had the bad luck of passing right around the tumor itself and risked being severed.

During the operation, I had four epileptic seizures. They were only able to calm them down by shooting ice water from a hose.

One month later I was home. Alive, but partially dead. 

I was back ready for my life. Lying down on my bed, I couldn’t see that life was going ahead. Ships were making their way out of the harbor. What I knew of the world was becoming old stories.

Right now, I’m aware of what I lived. The consequences of my experience. I lost an entire world I knew and I was part of. I live far from everything. I’m dispersed far away. I wait for something. 

The more the time passes and the more I see that what I lived is more terrible than I figured out. I get how much I have been strong to live hours and hours alone looking somewhere.

I lost the way I lived and worked for 25 years. Up to the tumor, my role and my goals made sense to my life. Like anyone else, I defined myself with my job. I defined who I was with my role. 

And ironically in my last experience I helped people to find their role and goals. 

Right now I’m on the other side. Again, I'm underwater and need to find a way to surface.