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BACK TO CHESTER - First Day First Day Here I am again. Chester. Where I was born. They say that every geographic travel implies a travel into yourself. A maturation. A final cessation of your problems. Or the hero's death. That's why I'm here, because I have to clarify some things about me myself, and I can't do it in Madrid. Because Madrid means nothing for me. And because *he* is in Madrid. If seeing him every day takes my power of reasoning away from me, if his arms around me make my knees tremble, if his kisses bring me besides human comprehension...if he can so much on me, how can I understand what I want -from me and from him- when he's around? Chester. A northern and quite insignificant English town. Yet it's my home. I grew up in Wales, but I spent my first years here. And it's this insignificant town -yet so important for me- that brings me back in time until our first meet; it's this town that clears the way for the innermost depths of my soul. Chester. Chester is of Roman origin. Along the river there are still some ruins. There's also an arena left, where gladiatorial fights took place. When I was a child, my brother used to take me there. He used to say: "Close your eyes, Michael. Go back to Roman times. There are neither blocks of flats nor cars nor cement. There's only you in the middle of the arena. You and the other gladiators. All around you there are people who look at you merciless. And you fight for your life." So I used to close my eyes, and when I opened them I was in the time of the ancient and splendid Rome, in a Roman settlement. And I was there, among the crowd but alone in the middle of the arena. And that idea incredibly excited me. But why this memory right now? Memories flow into my mind and I can do nothing but give in to them... Maybe that's why... Some hours before my first match for England David brought me to the stadium where we would have played that night. He told me: "Mikey, look around you now. Probably this night you won't be able to do it. First time I played for England I didn't even understand what happened till one of my teammates, in the changing room, told me I had been great. Look around you, Mikey, now. I know this night you'll be great, as always. But it could be hard at first. You carry the burden of responsibility of being our striker. And you're so young." Ant then, I did enter into that stadium that night. I did enter there with the jersey number 18 of England, and the writing "Owen" on it, defying the crowd. And suddenly David's words came to my mind. Suddenly I remember that the public was there for us. For me. All that people who, as my brother used to say, were looking merciless at me. Then I did what David had told me I would not have been able to do. I called David, I put my hand on his shoulder and I looked all around me. A thousand people wondering who was that boy close to Beckham. Two hours later, two euphoric, incredible, impossible, one-off hours and a wonder goal after....I wanted to tell all those people that I was Wonder Boy Michael Owen. That one was also -almost by chance- my first night with David. So precious, so painful, so unique, so fleeting, so tender, so overwhelming... David, six years after Etienne, what's happened to us? You tell me nothing has changed between us, but were are the ones who changed. You have Brook and Romeo, I have little Gemma... I'm not the boy you took the innocence away from, that night, anymore. And you simply aren't the David Beckham I met anymore. The David Beckham I fell in love with. But it doesn't mean I don't love you, because I do, because what I feel when I'm with you is Love and nothing else. That's why I escaped from you. Because I'm afraid of you and of me and of what we can build together.
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