Because one couldn’t live on monochrome paper; I was totally broke, my father was dead, and I couldn’t follow the Zeitgeist of the 20 plus-year-olds of the early 21st century and claim the privilege of living at home again, apart from the fact that it was totally burnt down, I rested disoriented in a roadhouse café.
I drank tap water there all evening and was starving and wondering what I should do now. Suicide was still a possibility, but thanks to the doctor I had developed fears of failure, it did not work the last time. I couldn’t get through this again. The doctor’s words resonated within me. To find something that fulfills me. What filled me? I could have called her, but I didn’t want to know about her, she was my plan C before starvation. Why would she take my call? I could have called her, hoping she had mercy after the silence and let me tick bite again. But she had a life now and I had none. I was afraid I could take that away from her. My excuse for being scared because I was afraid of her rejecting me; for the fear of talking to her.
I’m sure her life partner didn’t agree either when a former friend spent a few nights on the couch because he had burned down his home. In the best case saw myself chased out of my apartment naked, beaten on the streets and begging for a mercy shot or a beer. A beer. Mmm.
Then again, she wouldn’t answer the phone. The waitress gave me a look, she was angry when I ordered the third glass of tap water. Before I left, I left her tip at the table. About 5€. Ten percent of zero.
My second stop was home. I walked all the way with two six-packs beer, which I afforded in my last need, and sat in the ruins of my former house. The brick skeleton was burnt out, the wooden organs burned out, the memories no longer breathed, and I sat in the remains and had nothing. The garden gate was still intact. The lawn had only suffered from the heat in some places.
I laid down on the cement foundation. The beer can hissed, when I opened it. To drink I leaned up, otherwise, I laid on the ground and looked into the stars.
I came back from the realm of the dead to a world where everyone felt that something was wrong with it, and everyone had a different answer to the “what”, I didn’t care what was wrong in this world. I thought about what my dreams were and in the sky tent, the stars and my alcohol level showed me the way. I was long gone from being a drunk, three cans were hammering me down. There I was, drunk unconscious, amidst my unfinished notes on cocktail napkins and my twenties. It drizzled briefly, the rain woke me, the wind had faded the paper.
I would have liked to have seen her again and I would have seen her if I had told her: “All my life I have learned how to be indifferent to things. Do you really think it can’t be with you?”
She would answer “No” and she would be right.
What was the worst thought I ever thought about?
After all those years that dragged on me. All the things I’ve lost. I didn’t learn anything from that. Nothing. I only achieved what I was able to do against the circumstances and it means nothing.
I could have stayed all this time. Make something of me. Silently enduring here as I have silently endured there while something was made of me. Did I even want to? Be someone? As no one, you lived easier and only a no one gets what he truly deserves… nothing. But nothing is as good as “something”, if you rob the “something” of its value and you could rob everything of its value, you just had to really want it and sit down and think amazingly briefly. I do it to myself, other people like to do it with stranger’s dreams, but never in their own glasshouse.
You can resist it as much as you like, you can wind yourself as much as you like at the thought that you are exposed to others, but you cannot escape it. You can think of yourself as the best, never prove it, and then die a poor, lonely fool in a one-room apartment with a good feeling in your stomach. This does not mean that you cannot do everything for yourself and it is not bad if you want others to see you in a different light.
Pick the clothes up, so there’s a chance this girl’s gonna look at you. Start studying journalism so that your father can finally leave you alone and you can continue to laze around. Put on make-up while bowling so that the sweetheart from the lane opposite finally notices who is standing next to him. Write a book because you want to honor a dead inside girl’s feelings for you and get rid of someone’s spirit between the lines. I saw men buy melon hats because they thought women would like them. In life you do everything, so you can fuck more, and strangers have a reason to listen to you.
In the end, you can still lie and say that you really choose for yourself, for yourself, this fate for you. That you really knew it was the right thing to do and you didn’t just fall into it, for whatever reason, and it didn’t just give you fewer headaches than any other activity at the time. After all, self-esteem is a fragile foundation for building something and does not pay any bills by itself. Only the value given by strangers can be converted into currency.
A glimmer of hope remains, even if no one sees value in me, one cannot wish me away, even if one perhaps denies my existence, and that is comforting for me, as it also empowers. Not even I seem to be able to. I’ll go on as usual, whatever I feel like. I saw it before as something I had to do something about, but I want to see the end and I just have to find something that will keep me going.
They can’t get me away. And I’m human too. A person with memories that I shared with others. Someone who touches the lives of others. Yeah, she was my cut. I call her “The deepest of them all”. One I hoped wouldn’t grow back. One I had inflicted on myself. One I’d never recover from again. She was the proof that I could love and now that I was still breathing, here again I stand before nothing, I had to realize what I should have noticed long ago: I just wanted to bleed like the others do.
So, I opened another beer. I didn’t care. Tonight was my night. The next day I called a real estate agent, bought a notebook and a bus ticket.
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