[ WP ] Two people discover a fountain of youth . The problem is that upon drinking the water you turn back into an infant . The two decide to take turns raising each other in order to live forever until one day one of them decides to break this agreement .

Imagine growing up in a household where you are told that the nature of your very birth and existence must be kept a secret, not just because it is dangerously valuable information, but mostly because you'll end up in the looney bin if you explain yourself and stick to your story. That's where I thought my dad belonged for a long time. 
 
 I have to say, it's weird being fed mythologies as a kid. I suppose it's not so different across the world, no matter what religion you are born into. And it seems like even among atheistic parents there is an indoctrination of sorts; it's just unavoidable. But the story I was fed was so unique and bizarre, so unlike anything anyone around me was told, that I assumed that my otherwise awesome dad was just crazy. 
 
 It was March 5th, and I was celebrating my 25th birthday. As the story goes, it was the third time since `` the discovery'' that I celebrated a 25th birthday. My `` partner,'' Daniel, was 50. It feels strange to me now to call him my partner. He was always a father to me, and a good one, at that. I was so proud to call him my dad growing up. 
 
 He warned me not to get used to our relationship as it was. He would say, `` I love you and I ca n't always be your father, but I will always be with you.'' And he'd get really emotional, like there was something bad that was inevitably going to happen. And he'd cry and I just could n't take him seriously in those moments because I did n't believe him. Would you believe it if your father told you that you had been living your current life for over a hundred years? That you two started not as father and son, but as longtime friends, one of whom had an accident drinking some water from a spring and turned from a grown man back into an infant in a matter of seconds? 
 
 Apparently it was my father Daniel who, unknowingly, drank first. Moreover, apparently it was my idea to keep him and raise him so that at one point, when he was old enough, he could bring me to the secluded fountain to drink and live another lifetime as well. And we were to repeat this pattern, ad infinitum, until an accident or illness or tragedy should break the cycle. 
 
 Bullshit, right? I almost wished I had been told that a miracle-performing demigod died for my sins, or that our nation was founded by orphans raised by wolves, or even that aliens had abducted all the real humans and we were the only ones left. This story is the worst possible one because it means my dad is going to be gone. And because it's true. 
 
 I tried to deny it, I tried to fight him on it, but he showed me everything. The pictures of us, the writing I left myself, he showed me right before I reached 25. And now that I reached the age, it's my turn to live the next 25 years making sure I'm a good father to him. 
 
 And I ca n't do it. I will, but I do n't feel like I can. And I do n't want to make him live through this. I know we can potentially live forever together but I just ca n't do this to him. This is n't worth it. I would rather die and be dead forever than live a million lives losing my father at 25. I do n't have the heart to tell him that this is over after this, but he wo n't know anyway. 
 
 Who knows, maybe I will feed him some bullshit beliefs about how things came to be. And he can think I'm crazy and when he develops some critical thinking skills we can have arguments about how wrong I am about everything. And I can rest easy at night knowing that, fortunately, in this lifetime, he's right.
