As a kid, I made a pact with myself; I would never lose my imagination.

The young Edgar built secret bases for Lego characters, making stories they acted out. They were better than books. They were better than movies. The young Edgar would listen to adults talk about him. They would say, “he has so much imagination. He’s a dreamer. He has future.” Then, the adults would turn to him, and whisper, “never let it go. Adults, we lose our imagination. Don’t lose it when you grow up.” Young Edgar would look at the Lego figure and then at the base, incapable of imagining a world where he could not make up the stories. If he lost his imagination, he might as well die. So, he made a pact. “I will not let it go.”

In junior high, people made fun of him. He told stories to people, about how he would go down the center of the earth with Axel and the professor, stories where he visited a lost world with dinosaurs, a world where aliens came from mars because of envy. People made fun of him. They did not know he did not lie. That was not the intention. It was collateral damage from the struggle. He had stopped playing with Legos years before. He only had the stories.

In high school, he would draw, create comics and share them with people. They made fun of him. “You are 17, grow up. You can’t watch cartoons all day. There’s a real world out there,” they said. He ignored them. He began to write. He could not let go of his imagination. If he did, he was better off dead.

In college, he wrote. He drowned himself in words and books. This is where the imagination lives, he would think. People criticized him. “Face the real world. You are an adult. Reading and writing will not get you anywhere. You need a job to support yourself. Leave the fantasy world. Get out of your bubble,” they said. The bubble burst and he fell into the darkness that plagues the world, the darkness that corrupts, the darkness that makes humanity lose their inherent good, a darkness that makes you forget, the darkness the blots out hope.

I feel I have lost my imagination.