Promises, how easy they are to make, but how difficult to keep them. People do not stop doing them, without being aware that they will never fulfill them, fulfilling them is usually very expensive. Sometimes the price to pay is merely monetary, other times, it is paid with one's own life. Most promises are vain and empty, dissolving over time and forgetting that they once existed, but others haunt you forever. Promising can be a condemnation, a condemnation that can make you wander eternally on a path that leads only to perdition. This story begins like this, with a promise made on a park bench in a lost town that saw us grow up. There were three of us, Ivan, Erick and I, Michelle, we were 15 years old and the world was at our feet for us to conquer, and we really believed that we would. How naïve we were! The blindness caused by youth made us not realize the bumps that would get in the way.

Those were days of youth, our high school years, years full of illusion and promises, but also of first loves and disappointments. Ivan and Erik were friends since kindergarten, I came later and revolutionized their lives. We survived a love triangle in which Erick was the winner, which almost cost them their friendship, but we managed to get friendship in the way of passion, and although with a wound in his heart that would last forever, Iván continued by our side, but even though we were still inseparable, nothing was the same as before between them.

Erick always daydreamed, since I met him, he always aspired to do something great, his dream was to be a world champion in mixed martial arts, he trained like an obsessed, he lived, he breathed martial arts, he competed in amateur circles where he only knew how to win and he always did it big, he wanted it with all his being, and soon our town became too small for him. Their dreams were so big that there was no place where they could be welcomed.

Three years after our first meeting, our first kiss, we held hands again in that park to say goodbye and although he considered it a see you later, deep down I knew it was a goodbye. That gray and cloudy November afternoon, he promised more than he could afford, he was leaving after his dream, with only a few bills in his pocket and his childhood friend, Iván, as company and project representative. They left believing that the world would surrender at their feet, running against closed doors and suffering trips on all sides, and between us, the distance was getting bigger.

 

In that park, Erik promised me that he would come back for me as soon as he succeeded, thinking that he would do it in months, but colliding face first with the harsh reality, success is a train that moves slowly. They were just two brats who knew nothing about life, two children lost in the big city, with no one to guide them, no godfather to show them the way. But Erik managed to make his way, step by step, walking slowly without undoing what he had done, although he was in contact with people of dubious kind. Six years after our eternal "see you later" in that park, Erik had achieved a professional record of 9-0, fighting in the underground scene, in  small events that barely achieved coverage, but carving out a small path that sought to fork in a path.

I had moved on with my life, and I thought less and less about him, my life had changed, I went to college, I had fallen in love in the process, I had known the two sides of love, I had discovered the pleasures and sorrows of adult life and when I realized it, I had graduated as a journalist, something I had always wanted. Both Erik and Ivan were something very far away, a sweet memory of youth, our paths had parted and there was no sign of we getting together again. I hardly knew anything about them, although there were many moments when I dedicated a memory to them and wondered what they were doing at that moment, I imagined that they had already given up and had looked for something useful to do with their lives, I thought that they had probably already put on that mask that sooner or later we all tend to wear in front of society, with which we stop being ourselves to start being who we have to be, but how wrong I was. Erik continued to struggle to keep his promise, that long-lasting promise that had already charged its interest and no one cared.

"When I succeed, I will come back for you, and we will never be separated"

Those were his last words to me; they still resonate in my head as if they were yesterday.

One day, by pure chance, I received a call and then I met Erik again and that promise that he never fulfilled...