Complaints are one thing a service entity employee must expect at any moment in time. A complaint does not necessarily imply that you made a mistake. Sometimes the clients go crazy. They either complain because of you, because of the excessive procedures… or because they’re simply crazy. And since the system and the procedures were also laid down by other employees of the entity, one can only predict that where there’s human there’s error.

Out of the four years that I spent working at the bank, in three years and nine months, I’ve only been complained at once. I gathered three complaints in the remaining three months. The people at work decided that I needed a few days off. And so my best friend invited me to join him and his younger brother to head off to the ultimate destination of summer youth, AL SA7EL.

My friend went through shit trying to convince me to go. I hate road trips. Road trips constitute a minimum of three hours of hoping for absolute hypnosis. The wish to become absent minded for a significant time period. And even though I bought my first CD player in 1995, I was never ever the type of person who plugs the earphones into his head and lifts himself elsewhere. I stopped listening to songs about a year ago. I don’t know any lyrics anymore. I hardly ever listen to music. So I just sat there and stared out the window for what seemed like forever.

It’s levitating how the more you trance yourself in a stare, the more you notice things that significantly relate. Names and images of people and things that may have meant something in the past, the girl that got away, the street that raised you, a job you almost took, the movie you almost wrote, and more signs and things that makes you believe that the world does revolve around you, that you are the pretty center of everything.

The mind does know many tricks. All tricks are below the belt… but then again, like I said once before… everything is legal at the Sa7el.

As mind bending as it was, I seriously loathe road trips. It’s not the destination that is vague; it’s the wondering about what’s after the destination that scares me shitless.

Five days of self valuation is what that vacation brought. I had more fun than I had in years. When I wasn't in my fun mood, I lied my ass off through my acts not wanting to bum people out. I sat there thinking of what went wrong, how and when. But the whats and whens don't say much without the rest of the question. Questions I could not phrase out. For the first time ever, I was out of words.

I quote Herman Melville, author of Moby Dick, who once said ‘A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things’.

Man… is an idiot.

I will always remember that swimming pool; our pool. I call it ours because we were the only ones there all day long. I keep wondering that maybe it was empty because of that huge cousin of my friend who made a big ass splash on our first day there. But then again even though my friends didn't know it, I was glad that we’ve managed to claim the pool our own.

That pool... is where I actually saw where rock bottom was the easy way. I floated on my stomach and stared down there. I think my lungs feel a bit better. I can actually hold my breath a bit longer. I had to develop that skill so that I could actually stare longer.

One of the new things I've learned on that trip was the fact that if you exhale all the air out of your lungs you actually drop to the bottom of the pool. Perhaps that explains why all the things that have taken my breath away, have always pulled me down.

Surprisingly once you can touch the bottom of the pool, something pulls you back up. It’s no the air, since you don’t have any. I still can’t explain it.

I had to learn the hard way. Trial and error, I so hate it.

I envy my best friend’s sixteen year old brother. Even though I know that he won’t listen, his brother always tries to teach him things about life just to make sure that the bumps he’s going to trip over down the road could somehow be anticipated and eased out. He still wouldn’t listen though.

The way I pictured “our pool” at night had cigars and ice cold 7ups at the pool side. But just like many things change during the process of survival, like the fact that you grow a deafening sense of responsibility, the fact that you lose friends, and the fact that you actually grow past the age you wanted to freeze time at... every thing changes without asking for a No Objection Certificate. I couldn't find any On-the-Runs on the way to get the Blackwood cigars that I like and the ice cold can got hit by a basket ball and dropped into the pool. I ended up staring at the bottom of the pool, holding my breath, and waiting for a miracle.

Not wanting to let go is when your body strives to pull itself back up when your lungs are empty, knowing that you can always dive in again. A practice of endurance.

Now here’s the punch-line. When one’s just about to drown, air bubbles exit the nostrils. Ironic yet satisfying to know that when you let go of something or someone, something else liberates.

My friend had only one mirror at his beach house that I only looked at once on the last day. It’s surprising how ambiguous one can get without a mirror. You start to loose your identity. You start to forget who you are and what you look like. The only reflection that you have is that of your shadow hitting the bottom of the pool, sunken like a ghost of something that you’re trying to catch up with. Age is one part of ones identity. Name does not count as identification, unless it’s tattooed on your fucking forehead.

Without a mirror, you adapt to the majority. The majority were kids, different from the time I was at their age. Evolution is gravity’s ugly cousin, inevitable. With all the sixteen year old boys and girls, I was sixteen again… then everything flashed forward ten long years again.

I should have packed a mirror.

Everyone outsmarts themselves by saying that if they had one wish, they’d wish for three more wishes. The ultimate wish is to have a clean slate, start over. I keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again.

I’m back at my desk in my room now writing a post that I hope no one reads. I’ll call it my own as I picture that pool bottom and ask myself as I stare at my sunken shadow…

Now what?