Sometimes, it takes as much energy to end a thing as it does to get it started.  Many times, the thing you got started so easily proves so very difficult to end. Many times, the thing you know you must end, you really don’t want to. I suppose these three observations could sum up the power of any addiction…and my life. Thankfully, my stay in Antigua doesn’t yet fit any of these three categories.  My move to the Caribbean began as a “just because” and it’s still very much a “just because”.

This suits me fine because, my dislike for the blazing sun and the island’s uninteresting size and topography aside, I’d like very much to stay. And, I only get restless and ready to move when a choice made “just because” becomes something more.  There’s something obscene in me that loves to believe I have a choice in everything- even death.  Maybe it has something to do with my childhood experiences. Isn’t that where the root of all good and evil is always found to lie?

There’s a popular country song which gives brilliant life advice.  It’s a song which I like very much. This is saying a lot since I’m not the least bit fond of the genre- too many long-faced tales about some love had, lost or found- mostly lost. The song talks about knowing when to fold, walk away, run… in general, knowing when to call it quits. Whenever I hear this song, I feel as if it was written about my life…as if my life informed it. For, ever since the day I realized quitting to be as much a part of life as breathing or persisting, I made sure to contribute my fair share.

My one neighbour, a middle easterner, with whom I have remained friendly, enjoys telling his own slightly humorous example of people knowing when to fold.  During the earlier 20^th Century, “his people” (he always calls them that) were known for being door to door salesmen. They’d go around the island selling various things from their suitcases to the natives.

According to him, they heard the call to move up in life and so folded their suitcases.  They moved to owning stores and building business chains, well what counts for a chain on this island anyway. And now, he says, thanks to the current economic downturn, many of “his people” might soon be heeding the call to fold their businesses and go back, figuratively and literally, to their suitcases.

I think my first major folding happened with my father. I could feel myself getting so caught up in all his sorrow and silence. I could feel his silence trying to bury me alive. It felt like some heavier weight was being added to my tongue and body every day.  And soon, I began imagining that my very speech and movements were growing sluggish.  I remember thinking, maybe this was his way of killing me.

It certainly felt like he could do it this way and was well on his way to doing it. But, thankfully, the plot didn’t ‘flatline’; it got some decent bumps. Like any good movie, life happened…a love interest happened…the young man becomes his own protagonist, acquires his own battles and the surly old man with his look of doom and tombs knows its time to fold. And does.

 (V). Damien