Breathe
By Areli Paz
Idol: a person you admire with passion, you see no flaws in him/her and you only put above all that makes you admire him/her: his/her beauty, intelligence, spirituality, talent, wealth, creativity.
Who knows what... What do I know: inexplicable phrase of something we like for no reason.
Reality: the best counterweight to any daydream.
We were 7, we would get out of classes and together we would run to a hallway just to see him walk by.
He was in high school, about 13 he would have been. His name was Eduardo, he was not only handsome, he was funny and used to greet everyone.
He was not only the most famous in school, but the most desired. Calm down, at 7 one does not understand any wish more than that of a personalized smile.
Sometimes we ran into him when it was time to get on the truck. It was nice for him to carry the little girls' backpacks and drop them off at our places.
We saw him as a sportsman, on the honor roll and he always smelled good.
He had a flaw: a girlfriend who was very rude to the people next door. But in order to greet him we put up with her calling us "snotty, gregarious or toothy".
He was an idol. Girls and boys wanted to be like him.
One day we saw him arguing with the "bad person" girlfriend under some stairs, he got desperate and pulled her hair so much that I felt her neck thunder.
She came out crying and with a sore neck. He stuck to his charming smile, but this time I couldn't smile; I was scared, I was 7, but I knew that wasn't good.
After that scene I took distance, I was not the one involved, but I did not like it, I began to see her differently, after thinking she was a witch who had the precious gem, I saw her as a girl who suffered.
My friends, when I told them the story, did not believe me, they told me that I must have seen wrong, that "Lalito" was incapable of harming a fly.
He knew what I saw and he also took distance, he stopped smiling and I stopped looking for his gaze.
From a distance, this moment takes me to the story of Cuauhtémoc Blanco, a famous former sportsman, idol of multitudes, national team player who finally ended up in politics and in corruption and sexual abuse scandals.
For many, the idol has fallen, but unfortunately for others, the idol is more powerful than the reality of a victim.
The painful thing about it is that every day we go through life deifying people who are not worth it, who leave clues of their true behavior and that we ignore because we believe in a fervent admiration.
In several conversations the point has been "but nobody takes away his good soccer player, but it's normal, I'm sure all the old ladies fall for him, I don't know what to think, he looks so good" said by women .
What's scary is that reality overtakes us; on Saturday we saw the ex-footballer at a wrestling event with hundreds of fans begging for a photo or autograph.
Few cared about her half-sister's story.
Hopefully we will become a better society with men and women who empathize with the victims, with the stories of pain and we will be able to leave in the trash the paper idols that are diluted in a glass of water.
Subscribe to read the full column...
