By: Gabriela Yareliz
History books are filled with what’s important to us.
Our victories, our battles, and everything in between.
In the book, bad and good make it in.
In it, we find things that hurt us; things that surprised us; things we couldn’t control; things we provoked.
History books hold our story;
half written by us, half written by a Providence that never ceases to leave us speechless. Our lives are our very own personal books.
We guard and filter what goes into our personal books. We choose how we live, and we choose who we allow into our stories.
Sometimes, someone sneaks past a filter. Sometimes, there are events that make up a major chapter, and we had no idea they would.
We bind our books tightly, maybe with lock and key. We rip out pages, knowing it doesn’t change a thing. We focus on reading and rereading passages– and then,
We look up.
Who knew looking up could be so dangerous? There are times when we look up from our books, and there, a chapter is added; without a single spoken word. Added, even if we immediately look down again.
Suddenly, we are writing a whole new chapter.
We know how history books end; always with the present, the continuous.
And as we write unexpected chapters, we ask ourselves if this will be the last– meaning it will become our present.
And just the fact that we are asking ourselves that, shows why it’s in the book in the first place.
It’s about figuring out whether this will be history, or whether it will be the documentation of how the significant present came to be.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 