The Guy with the Biking Helmet.
That was the day that life trusted him. It was like a new beginning and all he craved was for an ordinary day. At least for one day he wanted to forget the “still present” past. The scar he had was inevitable, although, he tried very hard to ignore. The only way he would deal with it was using his sense of humor. After all, not too many people had their skull open. It sounded macabre but it was not at all, it was rather beautiful. The skin was the only barrier that would separate his living brain from the air and his hand. He fell in love with the pulse of life his brain would feel every time he touched his head. The worst has passed and the selfish sickness had given up to selfless. He was back, with scars, but alive, and all that mattered to him. Instinctually he began loving his scar. It was his proof of life. Horrifyingly beautiful.
Did anyone feel life? - he asked himself. Maybe he was lucky. That small part of the skull missing, interrupting the perfect round shape of his head, it had given him the chance to feel something profoundly different. Fearful, daring, loving, and in a way his secret lucky charm. No one could feel it or see it but him. He could put his left-hand palm over his left side of the head, touch the skin and listen. Tuck… tuck… his brain would slightly communicate with him as if stating “I am here, working”. The brain had a pulse to him, like the heart. I don’t think anyone knew this, it was his secret.
While thinking, he put his biking helmet to protect his head. Such device was not an aesthetically chosen uniform, but rather a protection necessity. The only time he did not have the helmet on, was when he was sleeping. This time was different, though, he was not “the guy with helmet” like many were calling him, but one ordinary biker. He signed himself on the cycling race and for the first time, he felt equal, ordinary, and alive. It was confrontation time. Only he could fight such fears, and this was his battlefield.
“Do not fall, you can do it” that was all he mumbled over and over during the race. He felt his body warming up and his brain living, while his young body was craving for so much more. He didn’t remember how he finished. The smell of nature excited him, and such happiness, from time to time, made him produce strange noises. He felt the pulse, and indeed it would have been impossible for him to be otherwise. He believed that in life there was one thing worthy of any one’s attention – love of living. Completeness came with its irregularities.
He belonged to the air at that moment, while everything became insignificant. He heard the city’s noise and peoples laugh, smelled the dust mixed with his own sweat, and was thankful his sensory was back. Suddenly he felt a majestical melancholy for natural smells and wanted to replace any clean hospital smell with natural dirt, dust, the wind, ocean, and the beer. Yes, the beer where his friends took him to celebrate after the race. He could not drink, but he was happy that he could smell. To others that were just a momentum, to him it was a healing process. He came to the conclusion that the world without smells was not fun. He was winning, one sensor at a time. After all the life, indeed, trusted him back.
