If the story of my life had been conceived for celluloid, I'm clear about what song would play at the beginning: Everytime I Look for You by Blink-182.
And the scene would begin in the most cliché way possible.
—Do you see that guy with headphones, glasses, and on a skateboard? That's me.
The camera would move forward a few meters and stop at a girl.
—And although it may seem so, this is not the typical story. I don't get the girl. For better or for worse.
That's how my first verses would begin.
And then the flashback would begin.
My dream of being a writer was born much earlier. It was born as a true bookworm, reading everything that fell into my hands while escaping from a playground where I often felt more like prey than a child.
Among books, superhero movies, and a strange question that kept going around in my head:
—If they can write stories, why can't I?
When I was a child, I often accompanied my parents to work. My father, a chauffeur by profession, and my mother, a TCAE in the hospital.
It may seem simple, but those experiences allowed me to glimpse very different worlds from a very young age.
While other children watched the days go by without more, I observed conversations, silences, goodbyes, reunions, and worries that I barely understood then. I saw people of all kinds, each carrying their own joys and their own battles.
Over time, I understood that it had taught me something important:
that behind every person there is a story.
Perhaps that's why I ended up obsessing over telling them.
That's how I started. Inventing superhero adventures for my childhood friends, so that none of us would feel like an oddball.
However, that dream gradually faded.
I never excelled as a student and, moreover, I had spelling problems. For a long time, I thought a writer couldn't afford something like that.
So I decided to take refuge in another of my passions: English.
I studied it intensely and ended up enrolling in English Philology at La Laguna, a city that would end up marking my life.
But it didn't turn out as I expected either.
I dropped out of the degree I had always dreamed of studying, and for a while, I found myself adrift, not knowing very well where I was going.
Then I wrote what would be my debut as an columnist, although I had actually started earlier as a poet at 19 years old.
I think people like Ismael Lozano and Pablo Martín supported me when I was not yet able to see what I could achieve.
And then I found what I was truly passionate about.
Investigating and telling stories.
For the first time, I was no longer afraid to share them with others.
While other children dreamed of being footballers or astronauts, I dreamed of writing stories. And when I stopped believing I could invent them, I discovered I could also find them. There were falls, fears, tears, and attempts to understand who I was.
For a long time, I thought there was something strange about me.
The curiosity that led me to spend hours researching a topic.
The need to understand the why of things.
The inability to abandon a story when I felt there was still something left to discover. For years, I saw these things as flaws.
Today, I suspect they were simply my way of looking at the world. In the end, I'm just a 24-year-old kid.
One who listens to Quevedo, Bad Bunny, and Blink-182.
One who, like so many others, has been told more than once that they're no good at something. One who has often felt behind compared to the rest.
And yet, here I am.
Not because I'm braver than anyone else.
But because there was always something inside me incapable of giving up completely.
That something is what made me write superhero stories for my friends when we were kids.
It's what pushed me to publish my first poems and articles when I was barely 19. It's what led me to research forgotten lives when no one asked me to. It's what made me write a book thinking that perhaps no one would read it.
Because, to be honest, I've never been the best student, nor the most popular, nor the one who had things most figured out.
I've just been a kid with a laptop determined to tell stories.
I may still be looking for answers.
But if I've learned anything in these 24 years, it's that I don't need to be perfect to chase my dreams.
I just need to keep living a story worth telling. And, luckily, that story is still being written.
So today, I don't want to celebrate a perfect life.
I want to celebrate the mistakes, the falls, the changes of direction, the dreams that survived when it seemed impossible, and all the people who helped me get here.
If the camera returned to the present now, I would probably still see the same guy. Maybe I don't spend as many hours on the skateboard anymore.
Maybe life has changed me more than I imagined when I was a child. And I guess, after all, the story was never about getting the girl. It was about finding my place within it.
But I like to think that the last scene would be simple.
Any sunset.
The skateboard leaning to one side.
The sound of the sea in the background.
And me sitting in front of that ocean that has seen me celebrate, doubt, fall, get up, and vent so many times when I didn't quite know what to do with everything I carried inside.
Looking at the horizon.
Thinking about all the people who helped me get here.
Thinking about that kid who wrote superhero stories for his friends. And smiling.
Because after all this time, I'm still him.
Only now I'm 24 years old, with a laptop full of projects and many more stories to tell. And, luckily, the movie isn't over yet.
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