I saw myself, but I was older

 

When I was 15 yrs old, I started to take an interest in the outer world and its history. What I discovered wasn’t good, wars, dictatorship and power mad people had shaped the planet and made it what it is today. I felt a stirring inside of me telling me that this life is not what it should be, a sort of hell to say the least. All those suffering people myself included. The so called rich and powerful obsessed with making as much money as possible, their avarice and pride disgusted me.

One day just outside my house I saw someone suddenly jump over the fence, a boy of about 18 or 19yrs old, with strange sticking up hair that I had never seen before and a leather jacket. I glared at him incessantly, thinking that there is something about him, but what. He walked away from me and seemed to be in a rush, as I watched him, he suddenly turned and looked straight at me, he appeared so sad and angry almost to the point of exploding, just a moment, I thought, "he looks like me", very much like me, just like a twin brother but 3 or 4 yrs older.

He obviously didn’t think the same because he turned back around and just hurried along the way he was going. I turned behind me to see if any of my friends were around, but they were not, and when I looked for him again he had disappeared, he had either run at about 100mph to get out of my sight or he had disappeared, I concluded that he must have disappeared, strange things had occurred before and this was just one more to add to the collection.

I just stood there in the road  wondering, when a voice inside of me said

“If you carry on the way you are going you will end up like him, sad, angry and all alone”.

Well I didn’t know what to make of it, who said that? how do they know?.

As I grew through my teens I became interested in the punk movement and became one, I was a sort of loner punk with my own thoughts, not a regular punk, but I did become a rebel dispising all forms of hypocrisy and oppression.

One day I was walking by a shop window when I saw my reflection in the highly polished window when it all came back to me, I had become the boy of 18-19yrs old with exactly the same expression on my face, with spiked hair and a leather jacket, sad, angry and all alone, a replica of the boy I saw when I was 15.

Ian