I wrote this piece in 2007, about a week after being diagnosed with breast cancer, not knowing yet how much my body and my life were about to change. It came through like a storm — unfiltered, unpretty, and painfully honest.
I was 40 years old, steeped in spiritual practice, personal growth work, and the ongoing effort to become better, wiser, more open, more conscious. I had done all the things “they” said would help. And yet, this poured out of me...
It wasn’t just the fear of dying that always comes with a cancer diagnosis.
It was the deeper grief… that some part of me had already died inside. Not from lack of effort, but from emotional self-preservation disguised as growth.
I wrote it in Spanish, my native language — not to be published, not for performance, but because I needed a place to tell the truth. It wasn’t meant to be shared. It was raw, private, almost accusatory — a confession written not to be seen, but to be survived.
Today, almost two decades later, I stumbled upon it again.
And I cried.
I felt grief.
And tenderness.
And recognition.
Because parts of it are still true — not just for me, but for many.
This is a letter from the woman I was then, speaking the words so many of us keep locked behind emotional control, spiritual performance, or carefully measured hope.
I’ve translated it below, and have included the original version in Spanish at the end of the post.
If you find yourself in it, know this:
You’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
You’re just remembering that healing without vulnerability… is just another kind of armor.
This isn’t a message of hopelessness.
It’s a mirror.
A mirror of what happens when we spiritualize our defenses.
When we mask fear as discernment.
When we trade mystery for logic…
and tell ourselves we are evolving, when really —
we are just growing more afraid to feel.
If you’re here — reading this — maybe part of you remembers too.
Here is “Twenty Years Later.”
Twenty Years Later
by Claudia — October 18, 2007
(Translated on July 22, 2025)
Is it helpful at all to dig into our past?
Yes. It serves to help us recognize that, twenty years later,
we are still in the same place,
feeling the same loneliness,
making the same mistakes,
dreaming the same fantasies,
the only difference being that
we now carry more weight —
a few extra pounds, a few more gray hairs,
and a heavy reservoir of tears — cried and uncried —
that the passage of time has left in its wake.
Let’s talk about similarities and differences.
Twenty years later, we’re still searching for love —
but now we always do it much more cautiously.
We want to open up —
but we make a heroic effort to open ourselves only halfway.
We laugh — but not with a full heart,
only to keep from letting the sorrow spill out,
the sorrow that floods a body already covered in scars.
We want to believe in love —
but we no longer know which kind of love to believe in,
because we have certainly stopped believing in unconditional love.
We still have the same dreams —
but now, we carry a near-certainty
that they are just that:
dreams.
We’ve gained experience —
but far from learning from it,
we use it only to feed our deepest fears.
We feel the same pain —
but now we hide it better.
We still think —
but now we think it over a thousand times.
We still wear the same masks —
only now they’ve hardened into second skin.
We are exactly the same —
but in an older, worsened version of ourselves,
thanks to the burden those twenty years have placed upon us.
So what have those twenty years been good for?
What good has come from all the therapies,
courses, knowledge, experiences,
loves and heartbreaks,
truths and betrayals?
They’ve helped us realize:
That we’ve tolerated what we once emphatically swore off as intolerable.
That we’ve attracted exactly what we most rejected —
not what we thought we were seeking.
That in truth, we have remained ignorant —
Because what we have learned is nothing else than
how to close ourselves off
to possibility,
to faith,
to love,
to joy.
In short —
we have only learned how to close ourselves off from life.
We’ve learned to be “cautious,”
so we don’t have to admit that the true driver behind everything we say and do is the constant fear that grows day by day, minute by minute.
We’ve learned to be “selective,”
so we never have to reveal
those parts of our soul
we don’t dare show anyone.
We’ve learned not to give ourselves completely.
To draw hard, impenetrable lines.
To close our hearts
at the slightest indication of imminent or imagined danger.
We’ve learned to distrust,
to stop believing in the reality of our dreams,
to hide our sadness,
to survive with our pain.
We’ve learned to live without innocence —
and with conscience (or perhaps unconsciousness?),
to be practical, logical, rational, measured,
level-headed, controlled, gray.
We’ve learned to cover up our intensity out of fear of rejection —
to swallow that “I love you” screaming silently from inside our heart,
too afraid it won’t be returned.
We’ve learned to settle for companioned loneliness,
because we believe our time for unrestrained love
has already passed.
And so we make every possible effort to maintain
the fragile little theatrical show
that has cost us so many years,
so much knowledge,
so many tears,
and so many disappointments to build.
We can’t afford the risk of admitting
that it, in all likelihood,
it may all have been absolutely in vain.
But the worst of it all is that
we maintain this theatrical play at the unbearable cost
of denying ourselves the chance to live fully.
Without anesthesia.
Without walls.
With courage,
and with a free and open heart.
Now I understand
why people refuse to grow old.
It’s the only one of my questions that has been answered…
twenty years later.
Original version in Spanish
For those who speak Spanish — or for anyone who wants to feel the piece in the language in which it was born — I’ve included the original version below.
It was never meant to be shared.
And yet…
here it is.
Veinte años después
¿Servirá de algo hurgar en nuestro pasado? En efecto, sirve para reconocer que, veinte años después, seguimos en el mismo punto, sintiendo la misma soledad, cometiendo los mismos errores y soñando con las mismas fantasías, con la única diferencia que ahora tenemos unos cuantos kilos y unas cuantas canas de más, y un gran cúmulo de lágrimas, lloradas y no, que el paso de los años ha dejado en nuestro haber.
Hablemos de similitudes y diferencias.
Veinte años después, seguimos buscando el amor, pero ahora lo hacemos siempre con mucho tiento.
Nos queremos abrir, pero hacemos un esfuerzo inaudito por lograr abrirnos sólo a medias.
Reímos, pero no a pecho abierto, sino sólo para no dejar salir el desconsuelo que nos inunda el cuerpo ya tan repleto de cicatrices.
Queremos creer en el amor, pero no sabemos en cuál de todos creer, porque ciertamente hemos dejado de creer en el amor incondicional.
Tenemos los mismos sueños, pero ahora con una convicción casi completa de que son sólo eso: sueños.
Tenemos más experiencia, pero lejos de aprender de ella, sólo la usamos para alimentar nuestros más profundos miedos.
Sentimos el mismo dolor, pero ahora lo escondemos mejor.
Seguimos pensando, pero ahora lo pensamos mil veces.
Tenemos las mismas máscaras, sólo que ahora más endurecidas.
Somos exactamente iguales, pero en nuestra versión vieja y empeorada, gracias a toda la carga que representan esos veinte años después.
¿Entonces de qué han servido esos veinte años?
¿De qué han servido todas las terapias, los cursos, los conocimientos, las vivencias, los amores y desamores, las verdades y las traiciones?
Han servido para darnos cuenta de que hemos tolerado todo aquello que enfáticamente tachábamos de intolerable;
que lo que hemos conseguido ha sido siempre aquello que más rechazábamos y no aquello que, según nosotros, buscábamos;
que en realidad seguimos siendo ignorantes, porque no hemos aprendido más que cómo cerrarnos a las posibilidades, a la fe, al amor, al gozo...
en pocas palabras, no hemos aprendido más que cómo cerrarnos a la vida.
Hemos aprendido a ser “precavidos”, para no tener que admitir que el principal móvil de todo lo que decimos y hacemos es aquél constante temor que crece día tras día, minuto a minuto.
Hemos aprendido a ser “selectivos”, para no tener que dejar entrever aquellas partes de nuestra alma que no nos atrevemos dejar al descubierto.
Hemos aprendido a no entregarnos totalmente, a pintar una ancha raya impenetrable, a cerrar nuestro corazón ante el menor indicio de un riesgo inminente o imaginado.
Hemos aprendido a desconfiar, a dejar de creer en la realidad de nuestros sueños, a ocultar nuestra tristeza, a sobrevivir con el dolor.
Hemos aprendido a vivir sin inocencia y con consciencia (¿o inconsciencia?), a ser prácticos, lógicos, razonables, medidos, ecuánimes, controlados, grises.
Hemos aprendido a encubrir nuestra intensidad por miedo al rechazo,
a tragarnos aquel “te amo” que por dentro nuestro corazón está gritando por temor a que no sea correspondido,
a conformarnos con nuestra soledad acompañada porque creemos que nuestro tiempo de enamorarnos sin reparo ya pasó.
Y entonces expendemos nuestro cada esfuerzo en mantener el teatrito que tantos años, conocimientos, sollozos y desesperanzas nos ha costado armar...
no podemos arriesgarnos a tener que aceptar que todo eso, con toda probabilidad, haya sido absolutamente en vano.
Y lo peor es que lo mantenemos al altísimo precio de negarnos la posibilidad de vivir plenamente, sin anestesias, sin muros, con valor y con un corazón libre y abierto.
Ahora entiendo por qué la gente se rehusa a envejecer.
Es la única de mis dudas que ha quedado resuelta...
veinte años después.
Claudia
18/octubre/2007
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