A SUDDEN GAIN OF PERSPECTIVE
A sudden gain of perspective.
Issued by: sitting on the side walk, starring into the wet streets, the yellow light reflected on the darkness of the night, on your birthday. 00:49AM all alone, between one group of friends and the other, ultimately alone, as always.

IMMUNE SYSTEM
As a kid, I used to lick the handrails leaving the subway stations because I assumed it strengthened my immune system.
As a teenager, I had only shitty boyfriends, because I heard I'd eventually build up character.
As an adult – so far – I've been living in awful places, pursuing degrading jobs, because I hoped it would train my aesthetic and prepare me for pleasure, even happiness maybe.

At least, I tell you so now, to excuse the lousy choices I've made all my life; including you. And to explain why I am such an asshole now,
I guess I just over-adapted to this world.

AND ADMIRE HER
There is a groundbreaking sadness in you.
It slowly walks out of the back door of your thoughts and assaults your projections of happiness, that threatens me every day we wake up. I just can’t look into the assumed perfectness of your life without crying, I am attracted to you because I admire it - but I can’t actually deal with it, or with you.
But when you saw him die and the sadness broke out of you, I finally became a person in our relationship. No, actually, that was the relationship’s beginning. Everything before that was me drooling over what you tossed at me, because it was your left overs.
Your emotional leftovers mainly.

I can’t deal with your sadness. It breaks me.
I wonder through the yellow-lit, black-shadow, gray-water streets to the place I used to live. I still pay rent for it, but I never make it there, everyday I want to wake up there, but in the evenings my miserableness pushes me towards you, trying to feel something in the fire I make of your emotional leftovers.

Now that you are depressed, I can’t burn anything. I step into a pond, a mixture of piss, rain and drugs, right in front of my door. I’d been gone for so long, I had forgotten about how terrible the area was, the house, the people in there, my minimalist room, that was supposed to air confidence and conscious living, but the mattress on the broken tiles in front of the dirty wall with nothing on it but dirt and dead spiders just emphasized my mediocre self-pity. There wasn’t anything heroic about being unable to fashion a room.
I turn the key, which to my surprise I found in my pocket and happens to still work and stand in the hallway, a guy I’d been living with for 8 months comes out of the shower and talks to me for the first time: “Man, could you move out, like no bad vibes, but some friends are coming into town and the don’t have a place and we want to record together, so you know.” “Yeah, I’m not much of a musician.” I reply and walk by him. He probably starred after me, but I manage to reach my room without talking to anybody else.

Light floods in through the door. I hadn’t noticed the sun rise. When had it come back to life?
I hadn’t noticed, that the sun ever shines into my window, apparently I had never been at home, awake and conscious just after sunrise. Six years of lamenting about living in a dark alley and the sun just pours into my room on a January morning.

A strong urge to call her passes me. “I just wanted to let you know that we won’t see again. I found my old life and it’s okay. It’s actually shit but still better than with you. I hope we can stay friends.”
I put my 3 shirts, the spare trouser and the little underwear into the half-molded suitcase which I brought with me when first entering the city; put the mattress over my head and walked out.
The guy was still standing in the same spot with the towel around his waist. “Can you fake my signatures for moving out? There’s half a tomato left in the fridge, you can eat that.” And I walked past him. “Is she beautiful?” he asks, how the hell did he know what I was doing? “No, but the world is ugly” “Thanks” he said and I left.

Back on the streets crowds poured in and out of metro-stations, I walked the known path back to her apartment. She stood in the kitchen, making coffee, wearing nothing but a veil.
“I was sad and I have learned enough from it. The book I started writing after you left will be published in June.” I put the mattress in the middle of the kitchen, sat cross-legged and admired her.

NATURE / EPIPHANIES
Literally every time I spent a couple of days in nature I have an epiphany about how happy I could be living in the country side. Usually I get back to the city and its speed before my insane fantasies of idyll could trick me into trying and seeing how horrible it would be in reality.

THE PROMISE OF THE FUTURE
I just found myself looking forward to the day when I take a tour through the NSA facilities, guided by a survivor witness.

WHAT I ACTUALLY WANTED
“And then, when I get home and can just undress and lay on my bed, still completely high, and maybe masturbate – you know, that's like actually the best part of the party. Like, not always, but quite often I find myself lying there saying to myself “Yeah, this is what I actually wanted”, you know?” “So yeah, great, you have found a way to present solitariness as a pleasure, that's quite advanced when everybody is optimizing themselves in fearing to miss out. But then, why did you even come here?”
Why was I talking to this guy again? He seemed to also have forgotten his reasons to talk to me, so he just bend over and snorted whatever he had been arranging during our four-hour long conversation while I took my coat to leave. I wanted to say something like “Because I need to feel shitty at the party. Because I have talked to people like you.” but even he would figure that it was a lie. After all, yes, I felt great at home because I had felt like shit at the party before. But not because it was a bad party – my carefully created artistic network of friends wouldn't –; but I never managed to cover the bitterness of my social anxiety, the over-thought conversations with unconscious guys I kept crushing on and general disappointment of never getting “the feeling” at its maximum. To cover the bitterness of that cocktail with drugs.
It was raining outside as I walked home. My shoes soaked through. I was slowly calming down. What a nice night.

DRUGS
All the people I admire do more drugs than me. I sometimes feel ashamed for consuming less elicit substances than socially acceptable, like, how am I ever supposed to make a career with these habits?

LOOKING ABSENT / HAPPY SMILEY
A girl looking absent within a group of friends in a club. I'd like to hit on her, but she gets out her phone and sends someone a happy smiley.

EGOCENTRICITY
This article is called “10 signs you ...” but I only talk about myself.

HOPE
I know I should be optimistic about the future, as my ancestors and maybe my parents were. When I walk out of the door, I should be amazed by the technology, astonished by the wealth, breath taken of the beauty of everything.
But I always end up reading about illegal mines and child labor on my phone, sometimes I check it for blood stains.
Maybe the world will be a better place once all crime is organized by robots, committed against robots, enslaved by robots; and we remain as the phony country that doesn't speak up in foreign politics because of economical interest.