EL ABSURDO DE LA VIDA / English version

EL ABSURDO DE LA VIDA / THE ABSURDITY OF LIFE

Introduction

Tom always believed that cinema was a way to save himself.

Not to escape, but to stay. To face what hurt and still find beauty in the chaos. From a young age, he chased his dreams with an almost stubborn devotion, convinced that one day he would reach the top. He didn’t know—no one ever knows—that before he got there, he would have to lose everything.

Along the way, Tom would lose more than he was ever meant to gain.

When silence finally surrounded him, there was no one left—no one waiting for him, no one speaking his name with love. He was completely alone.

And yet, it was there—at the bottom of his pain—that something unexpected happened.

Like the characters he admired, who found strength in the middle of the absurd, Tom chose not to surrender to it. He chose to fight. Not in the heroic way cinema often shows, but in a more human way—more uncomfortable, more real. A way that teaches us how far a person can go when they decide to climb out of the darkest places.

Chapter I

Tom was born into a poor family. Not miserable, but not comfortable either. They lived with just enough, learning early how to stretch their days, their dreams, and their hope. Two years after his birth, Merlyn arrived—his younger sister—who, without knowing it, would become one of the most important people in his life. To Tom, Merlyn wasn’t just family: she was refuge. But his childhood was far from stable.

When Tom was barely three years old, his parents divorced. The cause was violence. Samuel, his father, poured his frustration onto Tom’s mother until she decided to leave to save what little was still intact. After the separation, Samuel disappeared completely, leaving behind an absence that weighed more than any blow.

For an entire decade, his father was only a name. A blurred memory. A question with no answer.

When they finally tried to reunite, time had already done its work. The relationship never managed to heal. There are wounds that don’t close—you only learn to carry them.

That emptiness, Tom tried to fill it the only way he knew: by reading.

Books first.

Then comics.

Stories where the heroes were broken too, but kept moving forward.

That’s where everything began.

Chapter II

Tom doesn’t remember exactly the first time he watched an entire movie.

But he does remember the feeling.

It was an ordinary afternoon, one of those that seem unimportant until years later, when you realize that’s where everything started. The house was quiet. His mother was working more than usual, and Merlyn slept hugging a worn-out doll. Restless, Tom sat in front of the old television that barely worked. The image shook, the sound failed, but when the screen lit up, something inside him settled for the first time.

He didn’t fully understand the story.

He didn’t know about shots, scripts, or open endings. But he understood something more important: people could survive inside a story.

He watched characters lose everything and still get up. He watched goodbyes, long silences, looks that said more than dialogue. Without knowing it, he saw his own future reflected in other people’s bodies.

From then on, whenever the real world became too heavy, Tom found refuge on the screen. It wasn’t an escape—it was a way to breathe.

Cinema arrived the way saving things often do: without making a sound.

First there were borrowed movies, recorded on old tapes, badly edited, with commercials in the middle. Then came scratched DVDs, discs that froze right at the best scene. Tom didn’t complain. He watched the same fragment again and again, as if repeating it could help him understand something the world still hadn’t explained.

Merlyn sat beside him.

Sometimes she asked questions.

Sometimes she only watched.

“Why are they crying?” she would ask. Tom didn’t always have an answer.

But he began to understand that crying wasn’t losing.

Over time, Tom stopped watching movies just for entertainment. He started observing them. He wondered why one scene hurt more than another, why a silence could say so much, why a story could stay living inside someone.

While other kids dreamed of being athletes, doctors, or police officers, Tom dreamed of telling stories. He didn’t know how, or when, or with what resources. He only knew that one day he wanted to be on the other side of the screen. He wanted to be the one who turned off the lights and decided what emotion would stay in the viewer’s chest.

Cinema became his secret language.

The only way he found to organize his sadness.

Chapter III

Tom’s first opportunity didn’t arrive with applause or promises.

It arrived small, almost invisible, the way the things that change a life usually do.

It was at school. A notice taped to a peeling wall announced that a local group was looking for children for a simple play. Nothing professional. Nothing big. Tom read it several times, feeling something push against his chest from the inside. He didn’t know why, but he knew he had to try.

That same day he met Leo.

Leo was sitting on the hallway floor, leaning against the wall, reading the notice out loud as if it were a joke.

“Looking for talent,” he mocked. “They always look for that and never know what it is.”

Tom smiled slightly. He didn’t usually talk to strangers, but something about Leo was different. He didn’t fake confidence—he disarmed it with humor. They looked at each other a second longer than normal.

“Are you going in?” Leo asked.

“Yes,” Tom answered, surprising himself.

“Then I am too,” Leo said as he stood up. “Someone has to clap for you if everything goes wrong.”

That was the beginning.

The audition room was cold, with white lights that didn’t forgive mistakes. Kids repeated lines from memory, exaggerated gestures, tried to stand out. Leo went first. He improvised, made mistakes, laughed at himself. He wasn’t brilliant, but he was honest. The director raised an eyebrow, intrigued.

When it was Tom’s turn, he didn’t try to impress. He simply was.

He spoke the lines as if they were memories. As if someone had torn them from his chest. His voice didn’t shake from nerves—it shook from truth. The silence afterward was heavy, dense, different.

“Where did you learn to do that?” the director asked.

Tom didn’t know how he had done it. He only thought of books, of movies, of long nights… and in the end, that was all.

They chose both of them. Not as leads, not as promises—but together.

During rehearsals, Leo became more than a partner. He spoke when Tom stayed quiet, made people laugh when the atmosphere got tense, pushed Tom toward the center when he tried to stay back.

“You feel too much,” Leo told him once. “That scares people… but onstage it works.”

Leo understood something important: Tom wasn’t acting—he was opening up. And Leo made sure to protect him when that hurt.

They sat together after rehearsals, dreaming out loud. Leo wanted to direct, write, make noise. Tom wanted to stay inside stories. They would never compete. They would complement each other.

Without saying it, they made a silent promise:

to go as far as they could—together.

On performance night, Tom was trembling. Leo gave him a soft punch on the shoulder.

“Look,” he said. “No matter what happens, today we already won.”

Tom didn’t fully understand until he walked onstage.

The lights.

The silence.

The first applause at the end.

Something was born there.

Afterward, the director came up to them, looked at Tom and then at Leo.

“Don’t leave this,” he said. “What you have can’t be taught.”

They walked back together, not talking much. There was no need. For the first time, Tom wasn’t alone in his dream.

Years later, when life would break everything apart, Tom would remember that hallway, that old notice, that laughter.

And he would understand that some people arrive to become family…

even when the ending doesn’t belong to them.

Chapter IV

Tom and Leo began to do what people do when they recognize each other without effort: share the world.

They went to the movies as if it were a sacred ritual. They didn’t talk during the films, but afterward they discussed every scene, every gesture, every silence. They rode motorcycles with no destination, letting the road decide for them. They attended small concerts, the kind where music doesn’t seek fame, only release. Sometimes they said nothing. Sometimes they said everything.

They shared tastes beyond art. Music, yes. Cinema, of course. But also a love for animals—that quiet tenderness both of them hid behind a reserved appearance. They were jealous of their privacy, even when they started getting attention. In interviews they spoke little, smiled just enough. They preferred to let the work speak for them.

Their friendship grew fast, but not loudly. It grew the way real things grow: without announcing itself.

Soon after, they began working together on more plays. Onstage, the chemistry was impossible to ignore. They didn’t act in front of each other, but with each other. The audience felt it. Directors did too. There was something rare about watching them together—something that couldn’t be rehearsed.

A year later, the movie came.

It was a raw story: two boys surviving on the streets, sharing hunger, fear, and loyalty. Nothing glamorous. Nothing easy. But when Tom and Leo appeared on screen, the story stopped being fiction. Their connection was so real that their friendship broke through the script. They weren’t playing two friends—they were two friends.

The film wasn’t an instant phenomenon, but it left a mark. Anyone who watched it noticed.

Tom didn’t know it yet, but that friendship growing stronger every day was destined to leave.

Not with an argument.

Not with betrayal.

But in a final way.

The kind that offers no second takes.

And when it came… nothing would ever be the same.

As his career began to take shape, Tom refused to get comfortable. He didn’t want to be just a youth-film icon. There was too much inside him to stay on the surface.

Theater called him back.

He played Romeo, understanding love not as an ideal, but as a beautiful sentence. He joined other productions, each one more demanding, deeper. With every project, his talent became more obvious. Rumors began to spread: that kid has something different.

Tom’s life began revolving around stages, endless rehearsals, and applause that lasted only long enough to leave him empty again.

Then he made a decision that changed everything: he moved to Los Angeles.

The city welcomed him with bright promises and hard realities. Surrounded by artists hungry for the future, Tom began appearing in television productions. Small roles. Brief scenes. Names the public didn’t remember.

There was no immediate fame.

But there was learning.

He learned how the industry works. How you get in, how you wait, how you fall without anyone noticing. He began to understand the silent language of American cinema. Each project was another step forward, even if no one applauded.

From the outside, it looked like everything was going well.

From the inside, Tom didn’t know the hardest hit hadn’t arrived yet.

When Tom truly started being recognized, scripts no longer arrived by chance. They came in carefully sealed envelopes, urgent emails, phone calls promising big futures. Directors wanted his name. Producers saw in him something you can’t manufacture: presence.

He accepted an action film.

A new challenge.

Unknown ground.

For the first time, his name appeared beside the icons of the moment. The shoot was intense, demanding, but exciting. Tom gave himself to the project with the same seriousness as always. Long training sessions, endless days, cameras that didn’t forgive mistakes. Everything was going well.

Too well.

Until the world stopped.

The news arrived without warning, the way real tragedy does. Leo had died.

He was twenty years old.

An overdose.

According to what was later known, Leo had spent the previous days surrounded by other artists, using substances that promised escape and delivered emptiness. No one plans the end. No one believes it will be the last day. But it was.

Hollywood went silent for a few hours. Headlines spoke of lost talent, broken youth, excess. Tom didn’t read anything. He didn’t want to. Pain didn’t need context.

That day, Tom didn’t go to set.

He didn’t call anyone. He didn’t cry in front of anyone.

He folded into himself, the way he always did when something was too big to share. The press waited for a statement. There wasn’t one. Tom guarded his privacy, and that loss would not become a spectacle.

He went back to work.

He went back to acting.

He went back to doing what was expected.

But something had broken forever.

Years later, in a quiet interview—no invasive cameras, no morbid questions—someone mentioned Leo. Not as tragedy, but as memory.

“What was your best moment working with him?” they asked.

Tom smiled.

Not for the public. For someone who was gone.

His eyes grew wet—just enough that only someone paying attention would notice. On screen, an old photo appeared: two young boys, exhausted, happy, hugging after a performance.

Tom leaned forward.

He kissed the screen.

He said nothing.

He didn’t have to.

In that gesture was everything: the motorcycle rides, the laughter, the movies watched in silence, the shared dreams, the promise that never reached the end.

That day, the public understood something Tom had learned too early:

some friendships don’t end…

they just keep living somewhere else.

And even as his career kept growing, even as the applause multiplied, Tom would never again be the same boy who walked into that audition room with someone by his side.

From then on, every role, every scene, every silence… carried a piece of Leo with him.

And in the middle of all that pain came the one who would become his future wife.

Chapter V

Love didn’t come to Tom the way it does in movies. There was no soft music.

There were no endless stares or unforgettable lines.

It came when he no longer believed in any of that.

After Leo’s death, Tom kept going out of inertia. He worked, smiled, delivered what was expected. From the outside, he looked strong—successful, even. From the inside, he lived with a tiredness sleep couldn’t erase. He had learned to live with absence the way someone learns to walk with an open wound.

It was on one of those ordinary days, with no expectations, when he met her.

She wasn’t a famous actress.

She didn’t chase cameras.

She didn’t know who Tom was beyond what she saw in front of her.

That was what disarmed him.

She spoke calmly, listened without interrupting, and didn’t try to fill uncomfortable silences. She didn’t ask about awards or upcoming projects. She asked if he was sleeping well. If he was eating. If he was truly okay.

Tom didn’t know what to answer.

For the first time in years, someone didn’t want something from him. She just wanted to be there.

The relationship grew slowly, carefully—like both of them understood there was something fragile between them. She didn’t try to save him. She didn’t force him to speak about pain. She stayed close. And that was enough.

Tom began to laugh again without noticing.

He found peace in small moments: a walk, a simple dinner, the sound of someone breathing beside him while they slept.

With her, the world demanded nothing.

He fell in love without realizing the exact moment. He realized later—when he felt afraid of losing her. When he understood he wasn’t alone anymore, even if part of him still felt broken.

They married far from the noise. No headlines. No spectacle. Tom protected that love with the same jealousy with which he protected his private life. She became his quiet home—the place where he didn’t need to perform.

For the first time since Leo, Tom allowed someone into his life again.

But life doesn’t make promises.

Tom didn’t know it yet, but the love that saved him… would also be tested.

Because when you truly love, you don’t only learn how to live.

You also learn how much it can hurt to lose.

Chapter VI

Their relationship moved forward the way things do when they don’t need to prove themselves.

Without rush.

Without noise.

Without outside expectations.

Tom and Jennifer built their intimacy far from the spotlight. There were no grand speeches or exaggerated promises—only the quiet certainty of being there for one another. In a world that constantly demanded explanations, they chose shared silence.

When news of the pregnancy began to circulate, it wasn’t because Tom announced it. The world always finds a way to look where it isn’t invited. The media reacted with surprise: the famous actor, always reserved, always private, was going to become a father.

The attention was immediate.

Headlines.

Speculation.

Expectation.

Tom said very little. He didn’t need to. The idea of becoming a father filled him completely. For the first time in a long while, the future didn’t feel like a threat. It felt like a promise.

His fans celebrated with him. People who had grown up watching his work, who had followed him through every stage, felt that news as if it were their own.

There was genuine joy in the air—a collective sense that something good was happening.

Tom felt it too.

He didn’t speak much, but when he thought about his daughter, he smiled. He imagined a different life. A slower one. A more real one. He dreamed of protecting her from everything he hadn’t been able to avoid. He dreamed of being there. Of not disappearing.

It was a time of happiness.

Of plans.

Of names whispered at night.

Of a future that finally seemed possible.

And then the day arrived.

The waiting ended. The silence lasted too long. Eyes avoided one another. Tom and Jennifer’s daughter was born… lifeless.

The devastation was absolute.

What should have been a beginning became an irreparable wound. Tom and Jennifer entered a grief only they could understand. There were no right words, no sufficient gestures. Some days they barely spoke—not because of distance, but because pain occupied all the space. Other days they clung to each other as if letting go meant disappearing.

Time passed, but it healed nothing. It only made the pain quieter.

Two years after their daughter’s death, life—as if it were still not finished—struck Tom again. This time without warning, without preparation, without mercy.

It was an ordinary night in Los Angeles. Jennifer was on her way to a party. Nothing unusual. Nothing that felt final. Somewhere along the road, control was lost. One second is enough to change everything.

The accident was fatal.

Jennifer died instantly.

No goodbyes.

No last words.

No time.

Tom received the news as if it belonged to another world. He heard the words, but they couldn’t reach him. Reality became incomprehensible, as if someone had changed the rules without warning.

Loneliness stopped being an idea.

It became a presence.

With Jennifer’s death, Tom understood that the absurd wasn’t finished with him. He had learned how to endure one loss—maybe two. But this third one didn’t feel survivable.

He lost his daughter.

He lost his wife.

He lost the future he had carefully imagined.

Everything he had built outside of cinema collapsed in silence.

Tom stayed alive, but he no longer knew why. Mornings grew endless. Nights became unbearable. Memories lived in every corner, every object, every daily gesture that no longer made sense.

For the first time, cinema stopped being a refuge. Stories were not enough.

Characters couldn’t carry that much weight.

And yet, Tom kept breathing.

Not because he wanted to.

But because the body insists, even when the soul surrenders.

That was the darkest moment of his life—the precise point where everything could have ended. Where no one would have blamed him for letting go. Where the absurd seemed to have won.

But Tom had not spoken his last word.

Not because he was strong.

But because, even broken… he was still there.

Chapter VII

From that moment on, something in Tom’s career changed forever.

His characters began to resemble him too closely: solitary men, marked by inner conflicts they couldn’t name, tired souls carrying questions without answers.

It wasn’t a strategic choice or a calculated turn. It was inevitable. Tom could no longer perform lightness without feeling like he was lying. Pain had sharpened his gaze. There was something in his silences now that spoke louder than any line. The camera understood it. The audience did too.

Offscreen, the change was even more visible.

Photographs began to show him differently: sitting alone on a bench, the city moving around him without touching him. Walking without security. Looking down. There was no exaggerated sadness—only a gentle distance, as if the world had become something to observe from the outside.

Tom began to withdraw, little by little.

Not out of contempt.

But out of care.

It seemed like he was hiding behind screens, but in truth he was doing the opposite: learning how to live without them. What most surprised those who met him was his simplicity. The public figure had faded. What remained was a man who was attentive, kind, present.

He was seen taking public transportation.

Giving up his seat without anyone noticing.

Talking with fans like old friends, listening more than he spoke.

He didn’t run from affection. He rejected the noise.

And then, one day, Tom disappeared.

He stepped away from cinema without announcements or farewells. There were no official statements, no emotional speeches. He simply stopped being there. For a long time, no one knew anything about him. Rumors grew, but none were right. The world kept turning, as it always does when someone breaks in silence.

Until a photograph appeared.

Tom was on a farm.

No luxury.

No cameras.

No fame.

He lived there with his sister Merlyn—the same one who had been his refuge in childhood. The one who stayed when everyone else left. The one who held him without questions when strength was gone.

The image didn’t show a fallen star.

It showed a man at peace.

He worked the land. He walked slowly. He watched the days pass without urgency. For the first time in a long while, Tom wasn’t running from life or chasing it.

He was simply living it.

Maybe he hadn’t defeated the absurd. Maybe he never would.

But he had learned something more important: meaning isn’t always found at the summit.

Sometimes, it’s found in knowing when to come home.

Chapter VIII

For years, Tom was only a memory.

A name on incomplete lists. An absence no one could fully explain. An actor who had simply… stopped being there.

The world kept moving. New faces filled the screens, new stories tried to occupy the space he left behind. From time to time, someone mentioned his name in interviews, forums, late-night conversations among film lovers. Always with the same question:

What ever happened to him?

And then it happened.

Without announcements. Without press conferences. Without noise.

A poster appeared.

A film that promised much: dark, intimate, deep. The director was respected. The cast, solid. The image was simple, elegant, unsettling. Fans began to share it, to analyze it, to speculate. Everything seemed normal… until someone looked closer.

Far below.

In sober lettering, without ornament, without a last name.

Just one word:"TOM"

Nothing else.

Social media exploded.

Screenshots.

Half-finished messages.

Theories, memories, disbelief.

Is that Tom?

It can’t be.

Is he back?

I thought he’d never return.

When the trailer was released, there was no doubt.

Tom was back.

The images were restrained, almost silent. There were no explosions, no grand speeches. Only a man alone. A man broken. A man who seemed to rise from his own ashes. The character lost his wife. Lost his father. Walked through emotional ruins without asking for compassion.

It was impossible not to see it.

Impossible not to understand it.

Tom wasn’t acting the role.

He was inhabiting it.

Every sustained look, every uncomfortable pause, every prolonged silence carried weight. It wasn’t technique. It wasn’t method. It was memory. Experience. Life turned into image.

When the film premiered, theaters filled. Lines wrapped around city blocks. People who had grown up with his work, who had followed his disappearance in silence, now wanted to see him again. Not out of curiosity, but out of respect. Out of need.

The world watched Tom connect with the character in a way that was almost painful. In the theaters, there was no immediate applause. There were held breaths. Hands covering mouths. Tears.

Because those who knew his story understood: this wasn’t just a performance.

It was a scream that had never been heard.

A cry that had never been seen.

A goodbye that had never been spoken.

Tom was speaking through the screen, as he always had. He didn’t explain his pain. He didn’t justify it. He showed it. He allowed it to exist without apology.

And for the first time, the world wasn’t watching a star return.

They were watching a man survive.

When the credits began to roll, no one stood up right away—as if moving would be disrespectful. As if something sacred had just taken place.

Final Chapter

After all the pain and every loss, Tom found something he never expected to have again: love.

It didn’t arrive in a single form. It came in fragments—spread across small things that, together, hold a life in place. His fans, who never truly left. His films, which carried pieces of his story. The memories, which stopped being only wounds and became companions as well.

Tom appeared happy. Not euphoric. Not exaggerated. Whole.

On red carpets, the man once marked by tragedy was no longer there—the actor carrying impossible silences. Instead, there was someone different: someone who had accepted the absurdity of life and still chose to move forward. Not because everything was right, but because continuing to walk was the only honest response.

Nothing gave him back what he lost. Nothing ever could.

But that was never the point.

What mattered was continuing to build. Continuing to move. Continuing to live. And in that sense, Tom had won.

Despite decades in the industry, he remained relevant. A new generation discovered him without fully knowing his past, and still embraced him as a reference. Not as an unreachable idol, but as something rare and necessary: a symbol of integrity, kindness, and coherence in a world that often seems to lack all three.

Unlike many figures before him, Tom didn’t leave his mark through scandal or excess. He didn’t need to destroy himself to be remembered. His legacy was something far more valuable: his deep humanity.

In time, he stepped away from acting.

Not out of exhaustion.

Not out of forgetting.

But by choice.

He became a director. He opened space for new voices, new promises, stories that deserved to be told. He gave opportunities without grand speeches—supporting more than leading, listening more than imposing.

And when the cameras turned off, Tom returned to a simple life. To calm. To what truly mattered. He walked slowly, like someone who was no longer in a hurry to arrive anywhere.

He had lost much.

He had loved deeply.

He had survived.

And although the absurd never disappeared entirely, Tom learned to look at it without fear. Not every victory is celebrated out loud.

Some are lived in silence.

And that was Tom’s greatest victory:

to remain human in a world that often forgets how.

The End.

Author’s Note

This book was born from silence—and from questions that never have answers. It does not try to explain life or justify pain. It only seeks to accompany.

Tom is not a hero. He is a man who chooses to go on even when the absurd seems to win. His story is not about overcoming loss, but about learning to live with it without losing one’s humanity.

If something in these pages resonated with you, then this book has found its place.

To continue—even broken—is also a form of courage.

— Victhor