If I Could Turn Back Time

I want to turn back the hands of the clock that remind me, moment by moment, of the inevitable end…

But do I really want to?

Often we think we would change something—a choice, a mistake, that we would erase a regret if we could go back, through an impossibility imposed on us by our very condition, over time.

And yet, would this supposed return to our own life be a blessing or a curse?

At what moment would we choose to go back?

Perhaps we would want to relive the happiness of a certain day that has remained imprinted in our minds.

Perhaps we would want to say something different at an important moment.

Perhaps we would want to change a choice that turned out to be wrong.

Each person could think of millions of such moments to relive.

But why can’t I think of any?

No matter how hard I try to remember a moment I would want to relive, no image takes shape in my mind.

And even if I were able to see this strange picture, stitched from the threads of imagination and memory, I don’t think I would want to return to it.

No matter how happy or sad I have been, no matter the mistakes I have made, these were the seconds that built my world, that shaped this being who bears my name, this being who sometimes feels so strange to me, who has stolen my identity and reshaped it according to its own will.

Now, I suppose I have to live with the person who is always new, always different, always unknown.

To go back and transform this identity, to make better choices, to live this life again, would be a fight against myself, a fight against merciless time, a war I know I would lose.

Why fight? For whom?

For the person who follows me everywhere, from whom I cannot escape, in no corner of the world, for the voice that constantly tells me who I must be and what I must do?

For the stranger I am?

Perhaps the very beauty of the life I live is the endless flight from the sound of the clock measuring my moments, never letting me know how many remain.

Everything is only a desperate attempt to somehow overcome my condition as a simple human, a simple being subject to the merciless end, to preserve at least a part of myself in the world, for eternity, precisely through what I write on these pages that may live on even after my time stops flowing.

Would the world be the same if we could always return to it?

The old man on the park bench.

The little girl hurrying to school.

The woman fixing her hair in the shop window on the boulevard.

And me, watching them, lost in the rush of a universe I will never fully discover, but which I call, in a way that feels almost tragic, home.

We are all so different, yet the same.

Simple people, scared, happy, and tired; people who fight, people who play over and over the game they know they will lose.

We all live this life for the first and only time, with a single certainty: that we cannot return.

Otherwise, why would we live?

We must try, rejoice, grieve, and feel, to gain the apparent victory that we did not waste the few moments we had.

We play a game whose rules we do not even know, yet we continue to struggle, within this illusion we call fate, after what we believe is right.

If it were not the first and last time, would it matter?

If I could turn back time, I would say only three words, a phrase I have spoken so often, but never to the person it should have been for:

I’m sorry.

To that mysterious being who followed me everywhere.

To that person I see in every photo and every mirror.

To that little girl who is always so curious and eager to live, I would apologize.

Among all the people I have met, I wonder why I have always been so cold and harsh with her.

Perhaps it was the idea that I could never escape, her constant presence, and the impossibility of knowing her, of breaking down the wall that rose between us, that frightened me.

Captive in a prison without bars, just me with her.

I could not reject her; the whole world was not big enough for me to run.

I could not stop her.

I could only watch.

Watch, from a distance, how she carries my name and steals my identity.

How she walks, feels, and lives in my place.

How she builds my future right in front of my eyes.

If I approached her, if I helped her, if I supported her, if I loved her as she loves me, would it all be different?

I would fall in love again.

With the world, with life, with the summer sun, with snowflakes, with the music on the tram, with the people walking down the street, with the entire universe.

In the canvas of my memory, I feel I can almost touch her with my fingertips, that I can reach the silhouette that follows me everywhere, in the mist, the shadow that defines my existence.

Perhaps if I truly saw her, she would become… real.

And yet, no matter how close I come, she always seems so far, a road so long separating us; yet the hope that I will reach her overwhelms me, and I want to keep walking down the dusty path, among the tall trees scattered with flowers from the garden of my heart.

I know I would see her, embrace her, and truly know her.

If I could turn back time, I would return to myself…