The weight of guilt
Youth was a time when my friends and I thought we were invincible, the masters of the world. We felt we were above many and that superiority made us look conceited, unfriendly and hateful. Very few people could stand us, and the antipathy we aroused, rather than worrying us, fed our ego.
With that childish attitude, we decided to spend 15 days in a town where a friend's family had a house. The village was nice, small, had only two streets, a store, a pharmacy, the church. Everyone knew each other there and the news of our arrival in the village spread like wildfire.
In the evening we went out to walk around town and buy some supplies. While we were buying some things, one of my friends came up to me and asked me in my ear:
_Have you seen how the winemaker sees you? -I turned around slyly and sure enough, the man, much older than me, was looking at me very insistently. I laughed and began to joke with my friends. At that point one of my friends, who had noticed the winemaker's interest, said to him:
_We have just arrived and want to see the surroundings. Immediately the winemaker, whose name was Andrés, offered to give us a tour after he closed the business. My friends and I accepted the offer, aware of the man's interest.
That night we had a great time thanks to Andres who paid for everything. I was in the passenger seat and my friends were in the back of the van. Andres was a man in his 30's and he was enraptured by our youth. He laughed, made jokes and behaved like a young man. With me he was a gentleman and there was nothing he wouldn't offer me. For me, at that time, it was a game. I was aware of the effect it had on some men and in one way or another I took advantage of that.
Those 15 days we were in town, Andres was with us and he was not ashamed to show his feelings towards me who remained with an arrogant and dismissive attitude. In fact, when we were leaving town, Andres asked for my home phone number to call me and I gave him a fake number.
A few weeks later I was very surprised when I saw Andres' truck parked in front of my house. When I asked him how he had done it, he told me that a friend of mine had given him my address. That day he told me that he had tried to call me many times, but they said he was mistaken. Obviously I did not recognize my deception and justified myself by saying that he had copied my number wrong. That same day, in front of my house, Andres asked me to be his girlfriend and I rejected him arguing that he was an older man for me, and that I had no interest in him.
At that time, I felt no remorse, but over the years, when I became a mature person, I understood that I had acted reprehensibly and stupidly, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it, especially since I had never seen Andres again.
As the world is a small world and sometimes it takes many turns, after many years, I learned on a certain occasion that Andres was seriously ill in the hospital. Although I tried to see him, they would not let me in. He was married with children. I also learned that he had been in Intensive Care for a week, because he had a heart attack. A week later he lost the battle and died.
On the day of the funeral, I went to see him at the coffin and, to be honest, I didn't recognize him: Andres had changed a lot. There I silently apologized to him in an attempt to wash my soul. I felt upset and sad because I would have liked to apologize, but it was impossible.
As in Venezuela it is customary for several people to carry the coffin of the deceased on their shoulders before the burial, I offered to carry it for a moment. The moment the coffin was placed on my shoulders, I felt an enormous weight, as if I were carrying tons of stones. When I asked the others who were carrying the coffin if they had felt the great weight I felt, they told me they had not. Then I understood that it was guilt that weighed me down so heavily.
The images used are free to use and the text was translated with Deepl
