Words that do not matter

Okay, let’s be honest. The last post was babble and just a warmup exercise. Words keep my fingers busy and busy fingers make for an empty mind. I just happened to be an innocent bystander in a trainwreck. Sadly enough the shrapnel turned me into a goddamn porcupine, while others will probably walk away unscathed.

I put myself into a self destructive position again, whichs outcome not even my highly pessimism-advanced mind could’ve forseen. (Well, it kinda did. But who would have thought, that karmas fist travels THAT swiftly?) So, yeah, instead of one person, it was two kicking my ass. No bad intentions there of course. Just kinda happened. Woops.

The question I am asking myself is, what to do now? I have no reason to be angry. I knew it – everything. And still. Over the last couple of days plenty of words were spoken, inconvenient truths revealed. And I braved them. I did all I could, poured all thats left of me into what I said. And slowly I gained ground and momentum. And when I had the epiphany, of not fixing things on a map, but simply pointing in a direction, minutes after I made my effort, there came the hammer, telling me, what I do not deserve.

*BANG*

Now all that’s left to me is a pile of rubble, something I am supposed to build on all by myself. And even the thought is tiring (all that fucking toast.. don’t worry if you happen to not understand my toast-obsession).

The words that were said I neither can, nor want to take back. Of course. I meant them. But amazed I gaze at all that happened, how swiftly everyone moved in place to take it away from me. Again: No bad intentions. But self-pity. Bunches of that actually. A natural reaction I assume (I can’t truly know, since I am not a fully functioning human anymore, I was beingt told). But I wonder: What was real? The words? The action? Maybe, in a fucked up intersocial-quantum state, both? I can understand how panic turns into flight and reflexes betray what we just, mere minutes ago, claimed to be. Bravery becomes cowardice, the hero the first one to flee the battlefield. Whatever happened to fucking take a breath and think?

I feel my understanding turning into despair as I repeat what has been said over and over again. My empathy slowly turns into anger. And the irony – oh the irony. I’d laugh myself silly if.. well, if I wasn’t me and I wasn’t sitting on that very pile of rubble. But all that’s left to me is the need to scream. To scream and at the same time hold my breath. To cease to be and, even better, to never have been.

I asked not to be broken again, as I was being unerathed, from what I thought was to be my already long forgotten grave. But somebody considered it a charming, great idea to drag me back to life. Oh the irnoy. So here I am, a rotting corpse, out in the pouring rain. And not even the rats will take a bite.

As anybody is probably easily able to tell: I am losing my mind. Utter insanity just sweeping me away. Don’t know, where to run, don’t know what to look at, just wandering, aimlessly within the prison I errected around myself. And I am more tired, than I was ever before. And my cryptic blabbering, believe it or not, is as annoying to me, as it is to you. This blog was meant to be… I don’t know.. interesting. In some way, shape or form proving to myself, that all my mumbling, the talking to myself is not just fucked up bullshit, coming from a fucked up mind. The answer it has provided me with so far is less than flattering. Who would’ve thought.

So long story short: I guess I’m shutting this down. Maybe for days, maybe for months, maybe forever. For several reasons. The one most “interesting” is probably my disappointment with myself and what I am producing.

Tonight I somewhen might fall asleep. Maybe. And eventually I’ll awake from disturbing, panic inducing dreams, that oh so well will reflect and remind me of all that has happened today. And then, once what I just turned out to be part of becomes actually real, I’d like to be far, far away from this virtual wall I abuse for my nonsense. I just hope I can resist.

Good night. It was nice not knowing any of you. Maybe I’ll one day annoy you again.

Trapped

Not sure, what to do right now. Another weekend, another disaster. I am tired, but I can’t sleep. Distractions don’t work. Relentless, futile walking. Up and down. Like an animal in a cage. But let’s face it: was I a zoo animal, I would’ve been on the receiving end of a mercy killing long ago. And I gladly would’ve taken it.

But we are different. Humans don’t kill humans, not even if it is the same person doing the killing and the dying. Except for during wars of course. Over money. Oh, yes, and religion. And some states of course, they get to kill their citizens, if they did something really bad.. so they learn their lesson, I guess?

Our dealing with death is hypocritical beyond anything, at least in our oh so civilized western world. We are afraid shitless of it – as individuals as much as a species. We are so scared, that we remove it further and further from our lives. We lock it up behind hospital walls and even there we need special wards and special people to deal with the dying, because, well, we just can’t fucking handle it.

Weird, since it kinda sorta is something me might want to prepare for since, surprise fact: Each and every one of us is going to kick the bucket sooner or later.

And yet we avoid it everywhere we can. MAybe that comes with its inevitable approach. The moment we take our first breath and our first scream echoes off the cold, white-tiled hospital wall (rather similar to the one our last sigh is most likely going to be contained in) the clock is a-tickin’. And it gets louder. And faster. And it drives us crazy.

My encounters with death are few and far apart. The first actual corpse I saw was not the one of a relative, as it would seem normal. It was some random lady taking her pre-dirt-nap in a random freezer at a random undertaker I was writing about. That was very few years ago.

Death used to be a part of life. People lived in large families consisting out of several generations and it was basically only a matter of a few years until you’d be able to watch somebody drop. That probably scared the shit out of people too, but they also got used to the thought (and made them come up with nice fairytales of how you’d just have to be a good person and *poof* great things would be waiting for you).

Now we live in a time of meta-enlightenment. We finally (almost?) would have the knowledge, the technology and the ability at our disposal to understand what the fuck death acctually is. Do we use it? No. Some numbskulls out there come up with nifty ideas to prove the abovementioned fairytales (to no avail so far, who would’ve thought). But actually looking behind the curtain and facing the facts, thats something our scared, numbed society is unable to do.

Our minds function based on electrical signals racing through our braincells, synapses and nerves. Once we die, so does the juice. What happens to a toaster, once you pull the plug? It becomes cold and useless. And that sounds tempting as fuck. Seriously. Could somebody please pull my plug? I’m sick of all the fucking toast.

Stay frosty

Yesterdays rush of panic is gone. I spent most of the night playing milsim games and tactical shooters. The simplicity of it all helps. A task at hand. A map. A clear sense of where and even more important who the danger is. Find the objectives, destroy the targets, retreat unseen. Easy. If only life was as simple.

Testing myself within a simplified version of the reality I have to function in seems to be grounding me. Like a boiled down physics model it allows my thoughts to refocus on whats important, which factors are relevant. It clears my head. Plus it is raining today – heavily.

So even though this morning started with a chain of random catastrophes I have managed to regained posture. I am not angry, but aggressive. Eyes on target I’ll be awaiting what’s about to happen – both in my job and thursday night.

I have noticed this need for simplification before. Do you remember the atom-model they taught us in school? The protons – big, heavy, white, plastic balls – forming the core in the middle. Smaller electrons – as palstic-y but usually red – circling in neat and tidy symmetrical orbits around that cluster in a never endng race. Mesmerizing to watch, like a perfect planetary system. When I was eight or nine years old I found the similarity between the giant and the tiny astonishing.

Turns out, it was all bullshit. No neat circles. No shiny, clolored balls. Orbitals and plausibilities. Particles, whichs position can only be determined, when they are already gone. Something they didn’t teach us, assuming we wouldn’t understand. Or maybe they were just lousy teachers, lacking the fantasy to describe the magic that is particle physics.

The truth beneath it though is, that our mind seems to love simple models. Matter is nothing but plastic balls. Life opposes death. Where there is no war, there is peace. Be with me, or be my enemy. People are either black or white, rich or poor, dumb or smart and good or evil. We ignore the shades, the outside factors, determining the state inside.

I have never met a truly good or evil person. Not a soldier, not a murderer, neither priest nor nun, nor rapist or pedophile whom I’d attribute either of these terms to. Everybody does what they do, because it seems right to them at a specific point in time. And just like they’d be particles in most cases we are only able to determine their position in one specific moment, not aware of whats driving them or were they are going.

Observation, both of myself and others, has shown me, that humans do not act radomly. Never. There is always a motivation and every deed comes with benefits (and of course disadvantages) for oneself. We weigh them and decide between action and inaction – mostly uncounsciously. Altruism is as much of a fairytalish lie as is the idea of evil. We do what we do, because our experiences and our environment make us believe that it is, what needs to be done.

Good and bad are made up concepts. But we need them: the evil, the enemies, the oppressors. People, institutions, ideas we can turn against. How else could we explain things happening, we we don’t understand? How else could we fathom situations we can’t bear? And what else would we fight for and against on a daily basis?

So we simplify. We create a fairytale world full of dragons. We put on our shiny suits of armor and we feel righteous battling what is “wrong”. It doesn’t matter if its rape or civil rights, the death penalty, evolution taught in schools, abortion, vaccinations, communism, fascism, eating meat or crocs: To us we are all heros bravely taking on the monsters on the opposing side. It gives us purpose.

But what would happen if we’d stop? The wars on all we deem wrong would cease. What might sound peaceful would stop all development. We would not be able anymore to shape and reshape ourselves, our world and our societies. We’d lose the ability to adapt. So I guess our narrow minds are the motor of it all, the all overshadowing principle of evolution would come to a grinding halt. So maybe we need them, the artificial enemies we create, the ridiculous, seemingly pointless fights, that drive us and destroy us. To cull the herd and bring us close and closer to an ideal we will never reach.

I for one am sick of it. The fighting, the waging wars. I laugh at womens rights, gays abilities to marry, the pleads for peace in the middle east. Let ’em do, what they want. Let tem shape their lifes the way they decide. Let ’em marry, murder, love and kill eac other. I want nothing but not to be part of it all.

I only hope I’ll be able to keep this kind of perspective, when thursday comes. Because then it’ll be about me. My wellbeing is once again going to be put on the line, by a person, who means me no harm and yet could be both my saving angel and my own personal executioner. Until then I’ll patiently be sitting in this self built cell of mine, fighting the temptaton to simplify my life and to attack anything and anyone daring to come within reach.

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t

I do not believe in fate. I do not believe in a god. Evidence points to the fact, that all that influences our own wellbeing (or downfall) are our environmental conditions, our decisions and indecisions. An yet I pray. Each and every night I reach for a pendant I wear around my neck and clench my fist around it, until it hurts. I cose my eyes and hold my breath and think through a list of all things I wish for, as if I am mentally screaming it out into the void of the universe, where they and their echo fades away unheard. Usually.

I don’t know why I do it. It makes me feel ridiculous and (until now) nobody ever knew. One of the things I used to beg was for all whats in my head to be taken away – by somebody. By her. For someone to slay the dragon gnawing at my insides. I gave up on that a few months ago. It turned into something even weirder: “Plaese let things work out – in whatever way.” And then it turned into “Let something happen.”. Until all that was left was a name my thoughts cried out. No wish, no hope. Just the mentioning of one persons existence.

Today my green light blinked. And my heart jumped. That was about two hours ago. My pulse still hasn’t calmed down. My hands are still shaking. Working is impossible. The long list of things to do will grow even more until tomorrow. But what could I think of, if not the fact, that she contacted me. Out of the blue. Wants to see me. Thursday. A decision she made in her usual, harsh, direct way, which I appreciate so much.

I had decided we were done. All the pain, all the suffering. Being sidelined for so long – and I still am. I felt deceived, cheated, underappreciated. Used, chewed up and spat out, once I became useless. And the worst thing: It just happened. It was neither her plan nor her desire. It was unintended, nothing more but an accident. But I became unbearable. As I just do. (Fuck, there was a post planned about this issue too.. Wonder if that’ll ever happen..)

The process of separation took long. Several months. I started taking pills – first and last time in my life, someting I never wanted to do and never will again, no matter how tempting. She resurfaced again and again. Hope coming and disappearing, like tidal waves, slowly washing away at what remained of my already crumbling foundations. I tried to make a clean cut several times. But I guess I never mustered the guts to do so.

I had sworn to myself not to fall like that again – repeatedly. I had learned, I told myself – repeatedly. And now I’m doing it once more. Am I such a fool? What else was I supposed to do? Show the strength I promised myself to have? Her timing: Impeccable. A week ago I probably would’ve been angry enough. But now merely her showing remote interest was enough to tear down each and every wall.

Then my final words were “You don’t get to say goodbye”. I felt she had hung me out to dry and all that was left to me was to deny myself to any additional exposure. To deal the one final blow, I was able to, knowing, she would go on to lead a happier life without me, while I’d fall. Those words had stayed with me. They were, what I intended to remain. Strong and untouchable. Sinking towards my inevitable demise, but with my boots on and my head held high. Unshakeable and pathetically proud with no one there to watch.

Now my knees do shake undeniably and my eyes are unsteady. Everything I am able to handle but this. She makes me helpless and not even with bad intend. But I am bare, without defense. Would I have responded with a stern and decisive “No”, it would have felt so good but at the same time crushed me. All I could’ve relied on, was having kept my pride and remained strong – which would have helped. For a bit. Days, maybe weeks until the anger had gone up in smoke. Then I would have been alone again, this time entierly due to my own decision.

Not denying her was a mistake, but doing so would have been a disaster, of equal or even bigger proportions. I had a post planned about guilt, about how it shapes our life as one of our biggest fears and how it shapes each and every decision we take. And here I lead by example: Too afraid of having to stand up for chosing either way I am putting myself at somebody elses mercy. I used to trust her with my life. I thought that stopped. But she picked the right time. The moment where glorification and bitter-sweet memories overtrump the lessons I probably should have learned.

Whatver happens: Now it’s too late. Back to square one. Even if I cease contact this very second. I am exposed and miles from cover. The hit I have aready taken, so I might as well sty to watch, how this turns out. Ain’t life just interesting?

That green, blinking light

Between my keyboard and my screen lies my cellphone, screen side up. It looks as if it had been put there thoughtlessly: It’s edges not aligned with my seating position, laying on several sheets of paper, scribbled with almost illegible notes and just far enough way, so I can’t conveniently reach for it. You’d have to observe and know me rather well to realize, that there is more to this picture.

For starters, everything (papers, headphones, pens, businesscards, sunglasses) is randomly positioned around it. Nothing is close enough to even partially cover the shiny blackness of its screen. The fact, that its front is visible is another telltale sign. Like a dark mirror, it is facing upwards, reflecting a small portion of my computers monitor. This would normally drive me nuts. Each and every movement in my peripheral vision tends to prompt me to turn my head. So whenever I have even the faintest hope to get any work done I put down my phone with its screen facing towards the desk. Otherwise every mirror-image of my cursors movement makes my brain go “SQUIRREL!” and interrupt any thought I might just have had. Then there is the seemingly random positioning. The right top corner is furthest away from me and by that closest to the screen. This can partially be attributed to my right-handedness. Whenever I reach out to put something in front of me, it’ll be laid down pointing left. But the main reason is a little green LED in that very corner. The green LED which remains invisible for now. The green LED I keep checking by the minute.

Would it blink, it would come with the promise, the possibility of some, of any kind of interaction. An email. Or maybe even something definitely personal, like a whatsapp or skype message. Maybe even a text. Most of my social contacts – almost all except for work – rely on “social media”. The people I interact with are all hidden behind the screens I spend every waking hour staring at. And I have had somebody for years whom I shared my every day life with through those screens. A few times the person changed, but the way and purpose of contact stayed the same. A simple “Hey. I’m here. Are you?” now and then, a virtual, metaphorical voice, speaking in bits and bytes, cutting through the painfully real loneliness.

I never had many friends – even before such things as the internet or cellpones were available to me. Normally one or two people I relied on, one or two, who were loyal, whom I trusted. Loose acquaintances I never realy understood let alone managed to handle. Either somebody was in with me or they just weren’t. Once my life became more and more digital it was a logical consequence to also move my social life from an analog to a digitized environment.

And now I am stuck. All bridges behind me up in smoke and flames. Too broken, too jaded and too disenchanted and too disinterested to actually spark up any connection with other “users” and neither clue how, nor desire to engage in “normal” social interaction.

The temptation to reach for straws is rising. There was this short text my ex wife received a few weeks ago – one night, when I was barely able to hold it together. The first contact for years. I didn’t let my despair show though. Just a short apology and the plea not to reply – which of course she ignored. I deleted the conversation. Another message which I sent out to somebody else has not be received yet, even though I sent it weeks ago. I hope it never will. Aside from those slip-ups I’ve been able to tough it out. The need to contact showergel-girl is almost unbarable. Especially since my rage is fading and what remains are memories and what-if-scenarios. Glorification of the dead.

I am aware that there is no way back. Some people don’t care for me anymore. Others I wouldn’t be able to stand communicating with. Some have moved on so far, that there would be nothing to rebuild bridges on. Others I have thoroughly (and willingly) destroyed each and every link of those chains that once tethered me to them. And then there is still “me”, the monster inside, the reason, why I made sure there would never be a way back.

So here I am, in my self-inflicted isolation. No way back. No way ahead. Slowly drowning in nothingness. A big factor in my decision to cut ties with many people was the knowledge, that I couldn’t bear their disappointment once I’d sink too deep. Turns out it wasn’t just a preparation or the inevitable, but also a necessary preliminary for the actual downfall. I wonder how aware of this I was, when I made that decision.

Insignificance turns out to be both: my greatest desire and my biggest curse. And while it seems almost unbearable, whom it hurts more than me is, what’s inside of me. The beast is howling, screaming, throwing its full bodyweight against its chains. And maybe the bastard will run out of air before I do. Even a brief second, even if I do not get away, would be a blessing.

And so the staring goes on, for the blinking that won’t come. People are just a touch of my fingertips away. I’d get responses. From her almost definitely. But I wouldn’t know how to pay the price.

Pluviophile

Let’s forget yesterdays post. Thou shalt not write, if you don’t have anything interesting to say. Obviously. But here’s a somewhat interesting story for a change:

A good year ago I was sitting in a different office, writing for a different publication, a weekly local newspaper. It was monday and one of the hottest summers I can remember. Monday at that paper was production day. This meant the one day every week, when all the articles needed to be written to fill the gaps, left by advertisements, announcements, fixed elements, PR-bullshit and any other kind of paid content (anybody else seeing a certain kind of prioritization there?). Basically to pour the semi liquid mass of “news” to fill the gaps between the already existing blocks of stuff, that actually made the money.

Luckily enough the heat didn’t bother me inside the AC-equipped office, but I was still far from comfortable. I was “antsy”, as I would’ve described it then. Sitting still was really hard. I couldn’t focus on a single thought (which is just bloody awsome, if you are one of three people in charge of writing a whole newspaper) let alone write more than a sentence every 15 minutes. Then I was not aware of what exactly was wrong with me (not de depression issue, mind you. I was very much aware of that). I’ve felt that way before, but then the build up must have been more gradual: Over days and weeks, not hours. I kept clenching my fists, grinding my teeth, smoked a lot. Heartrate and breathing both elevated I was showing clear symptoms of a fight-or-flight-reflex and my body definitely would’ve opted for the latter. Would I have had anywhere to, I would have started running like I never ran before. What I was unaware of then is now crystal clear to me, having experienced it over and over again: I was having an anxiey attack, with waves of utter panic thundering against the fortifications of my logical thinking. Since my brain was incapable of actually determining any kind of danger I was in, it remaind this vague, yet horrible sensation of something just being terrifyingly wrong. This went on for hours, my condition worsening by the minute.

The fun thing about anxiety and panic attacks is: I must’ve had them for years and years, probably spending long periods of time totally freaking out but not even being aware of it, since I just didn’t see anything that might have induced this state of mind. That afternoon though, this changed. I was at a point where panic clouded my judgement and I couldn’t form a clear thought anymore. And then it happened, like a knot in a rope all of a sudden becoming loose, I am not sure anymore, what I noticed first: Every muscle in my body relaxing, the weight, that disappeared off my chest and my puls slowing down, or the thick, heavy drops of rain, hitting the window next to my desk. All of a sudden something had flipped a switch in my brain. All the tension and anxiety disappeared within seconds. Then I was not exactly aware of the correlation. It seemed like coincidence. But it felt oh so glorious. Focussing was not a problem anymore. The words just flowed. I got done in no time.

The summer ended soon after and I don’t think I thought much about this incident even only a few weeks later. It took me until this years spring during and a bunch of warm days to actually consciously observe it happening: Rain seems to be triggering the defunct switch in my brain, that is supposed to regulate my stress. And I have no explanation why.

I am sitting in an office now as well. Different company. Different part of town. But even with closed windows I can feel the temperatures drop, as the rain wettens the streets outside and turns the asphalts grey into shining, beautiful black. And now too I feel relaxed, like I haven’t in days. Breathing is finally easy again and my heart pumps slow and steady.

I have kept close watch on myself, since I figured out that there must be a connection between my well-being and the rain. What it is though I have no clue about. So far I was only able to verify, that it can’t entirely be a placebo effect since I was able to foretell rain by a good five minutes ahead of time repeatedly without false predictions. I have singled out a few physical effects the rain might have. The drop in temperature. The sudden elevation in humidity. Maybe even infrasonic – low frequency vibrations caused by the rain, unhearable, yet there. As exotic as it sounds, that might actually go along with certain kinds of music easing my mind. Whatever it is, I am determined to figure it out. And maybe, eventually, one day, being able to artificially induce the same effect. MAybe close self observation during the wintertime will give me more clues or at least let me single out the heat-factor. But for now there is only one thing I can rely on: When the rain comes, I finally get a few hours of peace.

Because I still love you, my love, and you’re dead

“I am stretched on your grave” was todays soundtrack. Every word, every syllable is burnt deeply into my brain. It is ridiculous. And it all is so wrong. Of course nobody died on me. What a great excuse that would’ve been. Instead I was just not good enough. Not “alive” enough. People get weary and sick of observing somebody spending their existence in an almost vegetative stage. I have been accused of having “given up” by more than one person. That normally is the prelude, heralding the end. “Why don’t you change?”. “How am I supposed to help you, if you can’t even help yourself?”. “Why don’t you just do something?”. Writing those lines I actually have to laugh. Of course I need to be alone. How could I burden somebody with what I am, if i can’t even take it myself? All the good intentions. All the hope. All the resolutions, that eventually get broken. And then the monster devours them – the ones I tried to please. And for me nothing is left but grief.

Logic tells me: If those people would’ve been important enough, I would’ve acted. But I wasn’t able to care. Maybe I just didn’t want to. But why the fuck am I mourning somebody then? It sounds so simple. You spend time with somebody, as long as you are worth their time and their are worth yours. And then you move on. They do. I rarely ever can. What is left is something rotting inside of me. Something I’ll never be able to bring to life again, while it slowly poisons me more and more.

But the real question is: Why on earth am I cursed with the ability to mourn, but actually loving somebody is far from my emotional range? While I am incapable of feeling that crazy, enthusiastic sensation everybody describes, I am very able to experience loss to the point of insanity. How cheated that makes me feel. I don’t actually have any desire to experience such emotion though. I enjoy the cold. Distanced and alone. It feels good. Strong. But then I demand, to have absolute independence. There are so many things in my life I absolutely do not give a fuck about. Why about people? Why about one of the few things I can’t control?

I sometimes have the desire for her to read this. Just to experience again, how it is to share thoughts with an actual human being. To have something like a connection. And I am horribly disgusted by this need. Just like this bloody post disgusts me. Will this whining of mine never end? Feels like I am only inches away from writing poetry – the real cheesy kind, with words that rhyme, the ones the internet is full of (and oh so many blogers do.. nauseating!). What a joke. Maybe this has run it’s course. All the good intentions, the ideas I intended to put in here: blown to pieces. All thats left is my whiny, scared high pitched voice in the dark. I detest what this has become already.

The great Pagliacci

“I heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he’s depressed. Life seems harsh, and cruel. Says he feels all alone in threatening world. Doctor says: “Treatment is simple. The great clown – Pagliacci – is in town. Go see him. That should pick you up.” Man bursts into tears. “But doctor…” he says “I am Pagliacci.” Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Curtains.”

An iconic quote from an iconic character. And this is, what made me remember it: Yesterday I was asked (again), why I am not doing what’s making me happy. “You don’t seem to be happy about your job”, a stranger approached me. “You should not waste your time on something, you don’t enjoy.” And then, there came the sentence I heard so many times. “You know your way around words, right? Why don’t you just, like, become a writer?”

Fuck you.
I often wish for the ability to punch through my screen and choke the person on the other end until their lifeless head smashes down on their keyboard. But statements like these almost make me actually giving it a try. I am, what could be considered a “writer”. Or a “journalist” for that matter. At least as long as anybody still cares to identify the PR-bullshit modern media demands day-in-day-out journalism.

Now it would be easy to draw a connection between my lack of satisfaction with the content I produce and my general dismay of the situation. But that would mean to outright ignore

Point being: I am doing, what I am (being told I am) good at. it should be easy for me, shouldn’t it? But it is not. Writing hurts. Writing is painful. Repetitive. Enraging. No matter what it is about. Be it scientific papers for university, news-journalism or the magazine-pages I am tasked with filling since about half a year: It sucks.

The point I am trying to make is simple. Many people are depressed, because of the circumstances they live in. They are alone, frustrated by what they do, by their lack of perspective and skills. I on the other hand should be happy as fuck. I made it into an industry I was never trained for. Within a year I found myself a job purely by the “natural” skills I seem to possess. I make a living, doing, what I am good at. And the pay is admittedly not bad, for somebody who just got started. I finally, after years and years of spending my time in a semi-vegetative state, have opportunity. A future. Security.

Does that make me happy? Fuck no. The desire to just eat a bullet and end it all is more overwhelming than ever. I changed everything, that drove me insane. Relationships did not make me happy (at least not enough to not sabotage one after another in admittedly rather impressive ways). Trying to forge social contacts made me feel even worse. And the job I threw myself over several cliffs to get, hoping for a safe landing, is now whats devouring me alive.

Work out. Eat healthy. Get enough sleep. Build up the security you desire so much. Take good care of yourself. All fancy solutions to the wrong problem. It is not my job, and neither the lack of human interaction, that instill the endless need to cease to be in me. It’s life itself. I should be happy. I’d have every reason to. But my dysfunctionality lies deeper, burried somewhere within the actual fact of my existence.

While I have become, what is supposed to make me happy, I have slowly but thoroughly managed to wipe out each and every desire I ever had – simply by achieving them. What remains is a void and empty shell, full of nothingness.

Cause and effect Part 2

So, I am self medicating. Of course I am. If you are desperate enough, you’ll cling to anything, making you feel good, and be it only for a second or two (and there is some weird stuff that’s helping, trust me. But I’ll get to that another time.) I discovered how music shapes my mood in my early teens. I am not a musical person, mind you. Never played an instrument. Can’t even hold a note in a childrens song (which doesn’t keep me from singing under the shower, but that goes hand in hand with the abovementioned “different time”). And, according to my ex-wife, I was “born without rythm”, which is a fact I can’t deny. She forbade me to dance at our wedding – a decision I think everybody including myself, was rather glad about.

But music does something for me. It used to be simple. Epic music to make myself feel powerful. Somber music to stop the anger. You get the point. Nowadays it is much harder. I can’t just open a metaphoric drawer, labeled “happy songs”. Somewhen I started to need very specific tunes to be able to focus and contain, what is churning inside of me. And I haven’t entirely figured it out yet.

Sometimes I spend half the day hopping from one track to another, never listening to more than a minute of each. They are too quick, too slow, too upbeat, the singers voice is not right. Then of course there are the songs I can not listen to, because the remind me of someone (to (mis)quote a colleague of mine, who was refering to books: “I have lost the best songs to the worst women”). Or I know the lyrics to well, so I catch myself moving my lips along with them, which is rather distracting once you are aware of it. Not knowing the lyrics at all is equally bad since I tend to listen closely then. And all of this really pisses me off, because I don’t understand the pattern behind it. Sometimes my brain likes an album and then the next day it’ll hate it.

But there are tendencies. (God, what a long intro to get to my minute point. Are you as annoyed by this as I am? But it is highly liberating to break the pattern I have to abide to every day at my desk.) Mainly it seems to be deep, low frequency noises that please, what’s in my brain – at least at work (at home it’s an entirely different story: Amorphis follow Mozarts Requiem, Clutch blend into Matisyahu, Medieval Songs meet the Stones, Clerikal music goes along with Shanties and Irish Folk. And I’ll listen to Tschaikowsky any day). At my desk it used to be Bolt Thrower and The Summoning I had blasting in my headphones constantly. Lately this has been replaced by stoner and drone metal. Be it Horn of the Rhino, Sunn O or Sleep’s Dopesmoker (how brilliant of them to make it one single 67 minute long track): They have somehow managed to drag me through plenty of grim days.

Since I am still unable to exactly figure out and formulate these “rules” by which my dsyfunctional brain sets its daily musical preference, I have closely observed myself. And it seemingly boils down to frequency. The best example being Dopethrone’s Dark Foil. I still don’t exactly understand why, but that’s the one track, that almost always works. Listening to it I can not only feel my muscles relax, but my heartrate actually slows down and so does my breathing. It feels almost like the sweet relief after being shocked by something. Only, that the state of stress and shock lasts for a couple of hours beforehand and is not limited to a qick “Oh my god, where are my keys – Ah.. there”.

So, what’s all this about? (Another rule at work: Never use a questionmark. You are there to give the reader answers, not ask questions. Ha! Fuck you, rules!) No matter how far I look back, there have always been discussions about certain (mainly “new”) styles of music having a bad influence on people. Rock made you a dirty communist-hippie, reggae was basically heroin for your ears, techno turned the youth into mass-fornicating-pill-addicted braindead zombies (the latter part I am not entirely denying..) and metal of course made all of us depressive, suicidal maniacs. It’s easy to prove too: I have been listening to all sorts of metal all my life. And now, just look at me!

There are several studies linking different metal genres to both depression and suicides. And I am not only talking about bullshit lawsuits like the one against Black Sabbath, where the band was accused of having driven fans to kill themselves (what a poor economical decision that would’ve been). Metalheads are more likely to be depressive fucks without perspective – as I am proof. But what if it is the other way around? Remember those cigarettes from before? What if it is not the music, that causes the depression, but it providing some relief to an existing condition?

While it has been proven not only by scientific experimentation, but also by movie makers, composers and many others, that sound does influence our psyche, I am not aware of any known link between acustic stimulation and the symptoms of depression. But I can’t be the only one experiencing effects going beyond “I like how this sounds, so I’ll be feeling a little better now”, can I? And wouldn’t it make much more sense, that depressed teenagers all over the world unconsciously expose themselves to something providing relief instead of something only making them miserable?

Cause and effect Part 1

As I lay in bed the world starts to spin. I smoked too much today. Again. I used to only smoke a little. Two, three cigarettes a day, sometimes none for weeks. During exam time at university my consumption went up but after that it used to even out – all by itself. About two years ago that started to change. Jobs with a lot of down time interrupted by very stressful hot-phases will do that to you I guess. I still am rather far away from a pack-a-day-smoker, but there has been a definite and undeniable increase. And this time there is no downwards tendency in sight.

I used to wonder, why. For years cigarettes did not trigger much addictive behavior in me. I know, this sounds a lot like the old “I can quit, whenever I want” speech. But I did. And I didn’t even mind. And of course there is that self-destructive part of it, that I obviously am prone to. When people ask me why I smoke, they usually get a “witty” comeback. Something like “Well, I can’t die healthy, can I?”, “Smoking still is the only socially accepted form of suicide” or something in the lines of “Well, since no one else seems to be able to kill me, it’ll have to be me finishing the job”. Short, half hearted laughter normally is the answer. They aren’t aware, how far from a joke and how close to the truth these responses are.

But it’s not only addiction and self destruction. I have been noticing my cigarette consumption rising, every time my psychological state became more unstable. Of course. I intended to harm myself. I was grasping straws. But it helped. Beyond what I was able to attribute to a stress relief or placebo effect, I had the feeling. So I did some research. Turns out, people suffering from depression are twice as likely to become smokers. Again the above mentioned statemens apply. Hating yourself leads to the desire to kill yourself, unhappy personality, yada yada yada…

Then I found mentions of a study. In 2006 Duke University Medical center conducted a trial in which patients diagnosed with depression were treated with nicotine patches. Patients who used the patches for eight days or longer reported a significant decline in their symptoms. In a placebo group on the other hand those effects were not observed. So there you have it: If you see me standing at a red light, pulling out a cigarette, don’t give me that evil glare. All I am doing, is trying to keep myself from jumping in front of that car going by. And trust me: That sight would be much more traumatizing to kid holding your hand, than watching me light up.