From ‘First Person’ to ‘First Person’

Notes From Gamze

From “First Person” to “First Person”

Life begins with the first person. For a time, you stay as one person at a time among countless ones. You breathe, you crawl, you walk, you run, you see, you hear… In the beginning you don’t know anything, you begin to learn everything. Innocent days will pass without haste.

The only bearer you know is the one you see before the mirror, as tears fall from your eyes. Maybe they blend in with the rain.

You run with your rose coloured glasses on your eyes, not knowing the possibility of falling down or being thrown down. With ease, freedom and without fear…

As you venture to new paths, you come across different faces, different greens, different blues… Once you find yourself in pre-made scripts, you realise that the “first person” is somewhere in a street that you can’t even remember the name of. It is too late now to realise that the excitement of running on a path is fading. The fair world just begins to show its presence. As if you haven’t lived with the “first person”, you are unable to treat your own wounds on  your own. As you struggle with pain, the unexpected “second person” arrives.

-Hello

Starts with a word, becomes a sentence in seconds, complete paragraphs in hours… As days, months, years pass by; you start screaming: “My life would be such a great novel.”. Years seem like an instant moment, as short as the time required to read this single sentence. As time passes by, the “second person” becomes “third person”. You bestow meanings to a bottle, just to forget the same sorrow. “Hellos” get messy. You become the “first plural”; you fly with a friend along with melodies, you smile to a new world with a lover. You trash the “second” person time to time when you’re with the “first plural”, or respect them with your every part. You become a slave to the second person, you get frustrated, you get angry, you can’t find strength within yourself. You get silent as you feel weak. You ask yourself: “How did I get here?”. You fall in the midst of questions that you were unaware of for a long time, but realise as you remember from your past. “Who am I? Do I know myself?”

You spend your entire time asking questions, without realising that asking the questions is half way to finding your identity. It takes time for some to embrace identity; others find it in an instant. The time that passed must be in line with the pain that has been felt.

Once you regain the “first person”, you realise that people in your life are nothing more than mere stuff. Sometimes as you sit in the midst of their life happily, they vanish with a kick you give. Sometimes they throw such a kick that they leave a scar that is impossible to heal. You comprehend the fact that sometimes stuff gets broken and disappears, or it gets fixed and it works again. Sometimes the new events surrounding your life cannot replace the feeling of solitude. Little things change with new moments, but that’s all. You find your truths. Things that you can compromise/cannot compromise, your regular desires and unbelievable dreams. You understand that there’s no need for facts once you do not dwell on excuses, nothing really hurts you, nothing really surprises you at all.

You realise sometimes someone you love, becomes the first in your giving up list. Even though it must be the first in everything, they dissappear with the memories, with a smile that leaves its mark… who knows, maybe with a word. You are forced to forget or leave with their memories without it in your life as you stare at a photo every day. There’s no right or wrong with forgetting.

The things you understand become your truth. The things you understand become yourself. And again you understand as you live by: You are both close and distant at the same time with the “third persons”. Because you think the same thing no matter what: “I am alone and I’ll always be the “first person”.