The Becoming

I often say "ABRACADABRA" because it means creating with words, he told me. "Its Aramaic and means I will create as I speak. You can write a new story, create a new life," his voice continues to echo in my memory. "You are the most loving person whom I have ever met,” he told me. “Control is not real, you can create with your word, pen to paper that is real.” He sat across from me and smiled. He was always smiling, so confident and calm. I just realized that he never provided his name to me. We have met for the last four months to convers over coffee. I had coffee dates with a stranger for four months to speak about authoring stories.

“There is only one significant condition attached to the creation of words,” he explained further. I looked at him, still wondering who he was, and then answered: “Yes, so what. I don’t have much to lose at this point. It is my life that I have to live and at this point I am about to create a new life. As long as I do not have to kill someone, I am fine with a condition.” A forced smile developed on the man’s lips. “That’s good. That’s very good,” he kept smiling while speaking, “You do not have to kill somebody else, but you must kill yourself. In this writing there is a direct connection between your creative thought and your participation in life."

“What do you mean, I must commit suicide?” I looked at him confused.

“Here is the tiny little catch,” he said, with a grin too wide to trust. “You must kill your character – not your body – and only on paper. While learning about you in the last few months I have realized that you need a challenge for great authorship. Stopping to challenge you is like the cutting off your air supply and your will to write lively pieces dwindles. Just remember to kill the character the correct way because you are creating your reality. What you create on paper cannot be changed. And that is the catch. I think that challenge will assure an insurmountable adrenaline production for a great story. Your struggles authoring anything further will stop.”

We shook hands and decided to meet within the month.

Out of fear, I used to act impulsively and denied myself the wild ride of a courageous story. In the distant past I used to be extremely fearful. I’d leap before I looked, strike before I thought. But this? This wasn’t like anything I’d faced before. This was a different kind of risk – the kind that wrapped itself in a metaphor, ink and consequences I couldn’t yet see. However, on the flip side, ink and paper used wisely could make a dream come true. “What does it mean to kill my character,” this was the question preoccupying space in my mind.

The metaphorical meaning of killing my character would be to write about the death of the part of me which is no longer beneficial.

For days I wandered through the corridors of my mind, haunted by the strange commission to end myself on the page. Was I to erase every flaw, every scar, every impulsive reaction that had defined me? Or, perhaps, it was an invitation to shed old skins, to draft a self untouched by wounds and patterns—one who acted not out of fear, but from a place of calm intention.

In the stillness that followed, a curious lightness rose in my chest. I realized, with a start, that this requested suicide was not an act of violence but of mercy. By letting the old character die, I was making room for someone new to emerge—not a perfect person, but an honest one. Someone who no longer clung to the narratives handed down or built of fear.

The idea began to ripple outward. If I could transform my inner landscape, perhaps the world around me would shift in response. I saw how my words could ripple into the lives of others, not by controlling them, but by modeling transformation. If I wrote love instead of fear, if I wrote acceptance instead of judgment, maybe those energies would find their way beyond the page, subtle but relentless. I paused, reflecting on what it meant to wield such creative power.

After all there was also the literal meaning of killing my character even just on paper. This offer was a dangerous one as the words I would write had the power to take on reality. If I would write about the death of the protagonist – who might actually be me in disguise, then I would die as well. So the catch is that once I write it that it becomes real.

“Then what about the magic in this offer.” I was thinking. “I can write a new story, and my words will turn into reality. I could kill my character as a ritual. It could be a magical contract, and my soul could be bound to a fictional self. By killing the fictional self, the invisible ties which bind my soul to my body could be severed. After that my soul could be free and perhaps its essence transfers somewhere else.” I was putting everything into perspective in my mind, before I would put it onto paper.

And what about a moral and spiritual perspective on killing my character. On taking the offer and writing reality? What do I kill? Who do I kill? My mind was racing.

I heard the words of Jay Westbrook in my mind. “Every perpetrator was once a victim but not every victim becomes a perpetrator.” Was I to tell the narrative of a victim? Change it into a victor?

Or was I to write about being a heroin. Did I have a hero complex enough to write it all out to make it sound and live good once it became my reality? Robert Edward Grant said: “The best way to end something is to starve it, no reaction just don't feed it, that’s where the true power lies, where attention goes energy flows and when energetic patterns are broken new worlds emerge, don’t return negative energy, remove yourself and create a new algorithm.”

Today, I was sitting and reflecting on the love that I hold in my soul. I looked and pictures of the past flooding through my grey matter reflected like a black and white movie on my third eye screen. On the screen I saw, what I loved so much but had to let go. I remembered the deal the pact and the risk. I could not go back once I wrote it down. I was to control reality through my writing, change my story and it was up to me to change it for the better. The film on my third eye screen would be now in color.

“I can be a better version of myself feeding the world with that love,” was my thought. At the same time there was another thought. I reflected fear of often had affected my life in the past. It was essential to change my reality to pure courage and love.

I sat there quietly and with my third eye wide open I looked back at my experience and realized that I was strong but fearful and that had to go. “No, that’s not right,” I thought. This is a pivotal opportunity for me to create a reality which is enjoyable and carries freedom and pleasure.

All my life I never realized, never contemplated the power my writing was holding. That power came through a pen, spilled onto paper. I put energy onto paper. This time I had an opportunity to change one thing and that was everything. I actually began to agree that it was essential to kill my character. “When the student is ready the teacher appears,” I thought.

I decided that it was imperative to kill my character metaphorically, magically and spiritually. There was much morality in doing so.

The man made me an offer that I was not able to refuse. I followed his advice and created my new reality, courageously, colorfully and real.

The past is behind me; I live for now. There is no past right now and there is no future right now. There is only this moment and this moment counts. In this moment I appreciated my progress and the creative power of my writing. This story I author for the man in red, is about a reality which is conducive to my life and to the life of others. We all have a journey, and I am rewriting mine daily.

“My principles are nonnegotiable,” I said out loud as I was writing this sentence onto paper. “My life is a journey not a destination and now I finally enjoy the ride.”

I picked up the pen. This time, not to run, not to erase, but to write the end and begin again.

I documented my reflections as follows: "A struggle exists within each individual. We must conquer the fear, not bury it, not ignore it – conquer it. Face it speak through it, write it out. And once we do, we must go further.” We must stop the war in our hearts, the war on our streets, the war between who we are and who we pretend to be. Enough. Let my pen be louder than any weapon. Let truth and integrity be heavier than any lie. Let the story I am writing from this moment forward be one worth living.” I kept writing without hesitation. What I wrote wasn't simply an ending.

I killed my character on paper as requested. I wrote about a funeral of who I thought I had to be. The funeral of a mask, an armor, a noise. All in black and white. Gone now. What came right after the funeral was not peace. Not at first. There was emptiness. Space and longing. Almost a terrifying kind of freedom followed. But there was space and, in that space, I found my breath, my voice and I found myself. Not the character, the survivor, no, it was just me. A colorful nerd.

“Abracadabra,” he said. We met as we had discussed at the same cafe. “The little catch was worth the risk.” He watched me put the pen down, slowly. I just had signed the story. His grin softened into something like pride. There was a glimmer in his eyes. His red suite reminded me of Dorothy's shoes in the Wizzard of Oz. I looked intensely at the man. “Yes,” I thought, “it’s a glimmer not a trigger.”

“The catch was worth the risk,” he softly repeated, he almost whispered these words. In that moment, I knew this was not about me. He’d done it too, once a long time ago. He had killed his black and white character and put on a red suite. He had chosen a blank page and had faced the unknown. Or was it unknown? Maybe only amidst our own minds.

“That’s the thing they don’t tell you. Freedom isn’t free. It cost everything you thought you were. But what you gain is everything you might become.” He stood up, stretched, and straightened his shirt. I was able to see the shadows of the past moving across the shirt's folds, then fading with the movement of the satin. He reached out for my story on the table and pushed the paper across to me. "I do not have to read it coz I already know it's brilliant," he said. "Adrenaline provides brilliance and undivided focus." He smiled.

Then he turned around facing the door to the street. As he walked away it seemed that he drifted like fog, following the contours of the cafe's layout. I saw the red suit disappear, somewhere between the tables of the cafe pushed out amongst pedestrians onto the sidewalk. A bright ray of sunlight blurred my vision; I blinked. When I looked into his direction he was gone.