I’m old. I feel old, and I am older than I look. I’m 19 today, more precisely, I will be 19 at 10:22PM, August 4th 2007. I’ve never had a birthday without the need to talk about the people in my life or my life up to that moment. This one is no exception. I know many people. Friends, acquaintances, people I’ve known for less than a day, an hour, 5 minutes. People I’ve talked to in train stations, subways, airports, cabs, bars, during exams or waiting in line for something. All sorts of people, the ones that drink expensive vodka and the ones who smoke cheap cigarettes, depressed, anxious, happy, inert, all kinds of people. Some of them liked me, some didn’t, a few hated me. I liked most of them, either way. Some I cared for deeply. A few I loved. Some I hurt, some hurt back, some hurt first just for the hell of it, mostly willingly, a few without realizing. To make a more detailed list would be kitsch, unnecessary and completely idiotic. And yet I find thinking about them in retrospective absolutely charming. I like to replay things in my head, hoping that those moments would just barely replay in my heart. And sometimes, it does skip a beat or two. And all these people I’ve known have helped me in some way or another. In an struggle to define myself – a need that has plagued me for too many years to count – I like to think that I am the collective effort of all these persons who have been in my life even for the shortest of moments. The truth is, I can’t define myself. I have no sense of self because I see myself through all these eyes that I’ve mentioned before. I need the people around me to keep me from falling apart, from disintegrating into bits and pieces of a person that I’m not sure exists. I need them to draw my contour, to help me be something. Who am I, if not something for everyone but nothing for myself. But I digress. I don’t regret meeting any of these people. Though I know for sure that some regret meeting me. In 19 years of being, I’ve done many bad things. I will refrain from making a list, yet again. This is not a confession. Nor an apology for that matter. I’m sick of those. What I’ve done these past few years, to me, to my friends and to others around me needs no apology, as I need no apologies from them. We’re all parts of each and everyone else’s evolution, and we shape each other like clockwork. And sometimes all the things that I’ve been through seem overwhelming. And I feel depressed and sad and angry and on the verge of regret. And the more I immerse myself in those feelings the more they accentuate until one day they become unbearable. And then I purge myself by forgetting. It’s a cycle that almost comes natural to me. But each time around, I refuse to regret. I do not regret any of you. And I’ve already said too much. And to tell you the truth, at 19 years of age, “sometimes the past seems too big for the present to hold”.