When I Was 8, I Was Asked to Make A Decision

4 min read

This is me at my grandparents’ house in Negureni, Moldova.

This is me at my grandparents’ house in Negureni, Moldova.

“Sometimes I don’t think people realize how lonely it is to be a kid.”
— Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

When I was eight, I was asked to make a decision, a decision that mattered too much.

The question struck me in the brain like an electric shock from a jellyfish’s tentacles that mercilessly wrap around an unsuspecting sea turtle.

And it didn’t let go for a while.

The question I was given was out of the comprehension boundaries of an eight year old boy. They don’t teach you how to handle those kind of situations, I didn’t know what to think or what to do.

I wasn’t prepared for it. I couldn’t know.

Four eyes were looking at me. The room was filled with some sort of poisonous atmosphere. I couldn’t smell it or taste it, but I could feel the tension that hanged in the air like methane gas that would transform into a beast by the name of fire if someone gave it a little spark.

I knew it was bad, I wasn’t stupid. Their eyes didn’t lie. Their eyes talked to my eyes even before I heard the question itself. Her cheeks were of a mild purple, the skin under her eyes was wet like the side of a beach that was washed by ocean waves. The white in her eyes had tiny red ramifications spread in all directions that looked like the aftermath of a microscopic Big Bang.

It was obvious that she cried.

He looked puzzled, like he always does when there’s something wrong. He kept all the emotions inside, in his cage. But his eyes, his eyes didn’t lie. I could see the clashes of thoughts and the struggle in his mind.

His body was like a volcanic island underneath which a whirling and bubbling lava resided, an island in the middle of nothing, isolated by its self-destructiveness.

She opened her mouth and words came out of it. For half a second they were incomprehensible sound waves you would hear if you were underwater and someone was talking to you on the surface.

My ears captured the sound, my brain deciphered it, and my consciousness denied it.

“Who… who do you want to live with, me or your dad?”

she asked, while barely holding her breath which was close to erupting into an uncontrollable weep.

I felt nothing. For a few seconds I felt nothing.

Then I realized that this is it, they didn’t have just another quarrel. It was definite this time.

The lights were out, the Sun had drowned in the horizon, birds weren’t singing anymore, flowers were withered, rain clouds covered the sky, the clock on the wall was ticking as loud as a drum. In the mind of that kid it was the end of the world. They are going to get apart.

I was terrified, I could hardly keep myself from crying. Who am I lying? The first tears of sorrow had already slipped on my cheeks.

I felt a pain in my head, or in my throat — the kind of specific pain you get when you’re a kid and you’re really mad about something you know you cannot do anything about. I felt like I was suffocating. For a moment I forgot how to speak.

I could see the regret and the hopeless expression on my dad’s face. He knew what my answer would be.

“With you” I said.

With her. With my mom.

Just like this, in a matter of one second an eight year old boy decided the fate of three people at once.

As much as I was shocked by the question, I didn’t hesitate too much. I was never really as close to my father as I was to my mother. He would rarely be home, I guess like most dads, but I loved him, it was an unconditional love of a kid towards a parent. I loved my mother too. I didn’t want them to get a divorce.

But I had to make a decision. A decision that mattered too much. A decision that haunted me for years, but with which I eventually reconciled.

What if before making a decision I would know the consequences of each option I choose? Would that make it easier?

I don’t know…

I think I would be a static figure at the crossroads, my body paralyzed for a moment, but still able to move, like a wild animal that was shot with a tranquilizer, but the drug of which didn’t get in the blood system yet. My eyes would be wandering through all spatial dimensions, my legs numb and palms sweaty, my mind hazed and confused, searching for an answer.

“ Before he was unable to make a choice because he didn’t know what would happen. Now that he knows what will happen, he is unable to make a choice.
…as long as you don’t choose, everything remains possible.”

― Mr. Nobody

*I originally wrote this in 2014.


Andrei VasilachiComment