L(if?)e: Old Journal Entry

During the 19 years of my life, I've seen my fair share of crap, tried my share of crap, gotten addicted to my share of crap, two of which still remain burdens albeit those two burdens being something I can never see myself without. I smoke and drink. That's it. Beyond addictive burdens, the social anxiety and mental depravation and misanthropy are probably also somewhat noteworthy. But not to any large extent. They just help make me who I am, they allow me to function.

The only problem I have with the world, is the in grown hypocrisy. People call me a cynic, I call it realistic and honest. Things that people don't value at all as much as they say they do. Far from it, they avoid these things whenever possible. But even so, I understand why. The world is a shitty place, and I would trade away all my knowledge and experiences for blissful ignorance any day of the fucking week. But people shouldn't say one thing if they really mean the other. That's my problem with people, they say something without thinking about it. Without having experienced the opposites. I've been there, I've been everywhere. I tread the path of adventure, and the path was paved with gold, and every little detour was filled with joyous surprises.

But then you get to the end, and the fates reveal your truth. One truth. The one truth. Your path is paved with five layers of the dead. Ragged flesh and blood-stained bones. Forever stepping on those who sacrificed their lives to make yours possible. And far into the horizon, you can see your goal, your final destination. And the path is far from finished. Can you make the sacrifice to see the end of your road, and can you live with it? It's a grim, yet oddly cathartic realization of how life works. Everyone else is a stepping stone. Build your own road, or become part of someone else’s. It's up to you.

It's a crazy world. And I'm proud to be part of it.

Strange memories on this nervous night. Strange dreams, strange aspirations. Strange hopes. Stray hopes. My life eludes even me, I can't believe I'm still here. And that I am not completely alone anymore, as I was just 3 short years ago. From the age of 9 to 16. Completely in voluntary isolation, because the world sucked, and they did not deserve my company. And because I didn't deserve theirs. At all. It really was a double-edged sword, to use a tired cliché.

I took up smoking when I was 9, at school. At least I could be immediately adjacent to someone during the breaks, and be a continuous victim of mooching, since I was desperate for human contact, and everybody knew that. It cost me a pretty penny, and my parents too. Smoking doesn't come cheap at age 9, and when you give away 90% of your smokes, that doesn't help. So I stole. Nothing big, just from my parents' wallets and the occasional shoplifting. Not enough to get me in real trouble. After all, I was only 9. I didn't know what I was doing.

I took up drinking when I was 12. Got some really bad moonshine off a guy that was desperate to sell it, because it was unfiltered, and 12 year olds just looking for a buzz are easy targets, they usually have no contacts. So I got it, for a price that could feed a Romanian village for a fucking week, and went into the nearest forest all by myself one night when the stars shone bright above, and the temperature was tropical, and got absolutely tanked on a bit over a pint of around 93% pure ethanol. For a twelve year old that's about enough to require getting pumped. I also got unbelievably sick, because as said earlier it hadn't been coal-filtered.

My late teens before moving away to go to "high school" (I can't find a more suitable word) was unfortunately well timed with a wave of mild, pseudo-heavy and heavy drugs that flowed into our tiny tiny community. By age 15 I had experienced sex, crappy 5 minutes in a bathroom somewhere with the village skank, I had tried marijuana, hashish, shrooms, mescalin, opium, cocaine, ether (easy to attain at your science class we learned), PCP, LSD, ecstacy and a multitude of other rave-associated substances which is odd taking into account the size of the town I grew up in and the fact that we never had any raves. I sniffed a small amount of glue when supply fell short of something else, also sniffed baking grease which worked surprisingly well. And then I got to try the killer; heroin.

You will never guess what substance is actually the worst to be on of all the above ever, unless you yourself have some experience in being caught in a web of drug addiction hell. And I won't tell you.

So there I was, completely alone and constantly high on something that had a literally corrosive effect on my brain, but I still functioned relatively well in school, graduated from compulsory school with a grade point average of 5.1 out of 6. I just didn't deal well with people. By this time at least, I had gotten out of the destructive drug abuse, save for 2 which I have already mentioned. Alcohol and cigarettes. And I'll probably carry those 2 with me to my grave by choice. So then it was off to "high school", with a bunch of other 16 year olds that were all complete strangers to me. I was the only one in my new high school class that was from the place I was from. It suited me just fine, although I was of course nervous, it gave me some peace of mind that these new classmates would probably stick to their own already well-established social conglomerates, and not pester me for anything. Until one of the guys started talking about needing some booze for the weekend.

"Shit, a possibility to make money" I thought. "I can't let this pass, I'm fucking starving."

So I just turned to the guy and asked him with a certain degree of subtlety and a genuinely serious look on my face; "How much do you need?" To which he replied "2 litres if you can spare it." At all times I would have 50-70 litres stockpiled somewhere, so yeah I could spare it, of course I didn't say that in fear of surrounding ears that could listen in to our little barter. We agreed upon a price, and a place to make the trade. And by agreed upon a price, I mean I said it would cost him $30 a litre, and he gave me a disgruntled "fine". I knew he would. He had said himself he was desperate, I could risk overpricing it when I knew he was desperate.

Then after 3 weeks, I'm the dealer of ethanol for the whole fucking school. I made shitloads of money, and suddenly all these people want to "hang" with me, no doubt for their own phiscal and/or social benefit. After a while, I started exaggerating on the drinks on school nights, or spending too much time at the local internet caf, and I ended up being absent for 72 days of a total 180. I was of the belief that if I didn't show up and the beginning of the day, there was no point showing at all. Mostly because I would be hung over the entire day anyway, and not just the beginning. But atleast when I did show up, I was still pretty apt at schoolwork, so I miraculously passed most of my classes, save for math and German. And even those were just based on absense not actual academic performance.

What also happened after 3 weeks, was I got a call from my sister. Just a short while before that, I had gotten a drivers license to drive a 125cc light motorcycle, and my father had loaned me the money to purchase a Honda-ish thing that looked like a Harley. Actually, it had a bigger gas tank than most Harleys do, at 13.5 litre capacity. Anyway, she called me, she was crying, she told me her fiancee's brother had just raped her. I didn't even let her finish talking, I just asked her where the bastard was living, and I was off. She lived 800 miles from where I did, I covered that distance on my pathetic 125cc in 4-5 hours I imagine. I met up with my sister and her fiancee, her fiancee told me where the sack of flesh lived, and we were off in his car.

The next 5 hours are all blurry. We spent alot of effort keeping him alive, I remember that. Death was too good for him. I consider myself a relatively respectable citizen. Misanthropic and sociopathic and a multiple felon perhaps, but certainly not dangerous. So when I came to, and what I see is a man drowning in a pool of his own blood and vomit, his akilles sinews severd, nipples snippet off, ear lobes missing, holes poked into his abdomen avoiding vitals, I was shocked, and I threw up at the sight of it. Never before, and never after that, have I totally snapped like that. Ever. And I still carry this huge sense of guilt because of it. And I always will. Not because of what I did to that guy specifically, fuck no I hope he contracts every venerial disease on the planet and survives them, and becomes a walking cancer that plagues the earth, living each day until his life is claimed by old age and heart attack in excrutiating sexually deprived agony. It was just the simple fact that I, of all people, snapped. I had after all kept my emotions under lock and keep for 7 grueling years.

So that was something I carried to the end of my Cambridge year, which marked the end of school for me for a year, which I spent "maturing". Unfortunately, this period was spent at home in the town I grew up in, which was just one great big hole of bad memories for me, so I locked myself into my room and went online for about 8 months. I still blame my parents for that one, they should have known better. They never did take the time to actually find out about what I was doing when I was 12-15. They never got to know me.

Euphoric asocial misanthropia. In my own way I was content with my isolation. I hated them, all the other humans out there. They were capable of all kinds of crap, like raping innocent girls. Or suddenly losing control and maim someone, not taking their life, but making the rest of their life worthless. And I hated myself for having the same potential. For being the same as them. I had already proven I was not worthy to socialize with others, and the others could not be trusted anyway. In a way I was better off alone. But it really is depressing to not see, hear or touch another human being for 8 months, actually I had gone the entirety of my puberty not ever touching a girl. Sometimes I think the only reason I didn't suddenly flip and become a rapist myself was because of that incident with my sister. Nothing in the world is lower. But you need one to strike close to home before you actually realize that. Call me a cynic if you must, it's how it works.

So after a year, I figured I was ready for another go at school. Boy was I wrong, fortunately I realized it before it was too late and dropped out in time to meet the dead line so I didn't have to repay the scholarship all boarding school students studying away from home are given. But that meant another 8 months of isolation, with the internet as my only companion. Then I get a call from a girl that was in my class. One of those that you secretly stare at all the time, but never ever dare to ask out because she's way out of your league. Well, in my case the only thing that stopped me was the feeling of inferiority in general. I'm pretty arrogant, but I never felt like forcing all my burdens onto others so a relationship to me was pretty much out of the question. But I had secretly been staring at her, dreaming for 3 years. She calls me, and asks if I want to come back to the city for the old class' graduation party. I had misgivings, but finally I came to the conclusion that fuck it, it's a chance to get good and hammered. The town I lived in was all dried up anyway.

I get there, to the party she's invited me to, thinking there would be all my class mates. Turns out it's a girls party, me and 7 other chicks with the ugly friend everyone keeps talking about no where to be seen. Needless to say I feel uneasy. So I start to get drunk, she starts to get drunk, she drags me into a corner and sticks her tongue down my throat. Then she starts talking.

"I've been secretly staring at you for the past 3 years."

Immediately I think hey, that's my line. Then I start thinking about what she just said, and I refuse to believe it. Is this where I get to have sex for the first time in 5 years? With this, the hottest chick in my entire school? No fucking way. Later when the rest of the girls have left to go club-hopping, it turns out yes fucking way. Literally. So we saw each other for about 2 weeks, she talked alot about her ex and how much she hated him, they had been going steady for 2.5 years. She actually hadn't been around that much. Then I decide she deserves to know my past, only if she can accept what I am can this really happen. So I tell her. Bad fucking move. She freezes up, and I start to cry and go downstairs and chainsmoke 12 cigarettes. She comes down and asks if I won't come back to bed. Maybe she's come to terms with it, I think to myself hopefully. No such luck, it was just to ease her conscience so I wouldn't stay up all night and be a wreck the next day when she drives me home, smiling, lets me off at my place gives me a smiling kiss good bye and tells me over short message service later that we can't see each other any more on account that I'm too depressive.

I feel like I'm holding a pair of aces and a pair of eights. Just waiting for that bullet. Hoping for it. Now I don't even count those 2 weeks into any equation. It never happened, and she almost smothered any hopes I had for my life. One man and one man alone is responsible for my continued existance. And later on, one girl.

Now I'm in my late 20’s, things are starting to go my way. Finally things are going my way. I'm on my way to become a licensed house-builder, I have 2-3 people I can call friends, and 1 I can call a true good friend, and 1 very special girl (my Precious, I LOVE HER) I would take a bullet just to spend time with. I've got everything I need right now, and I like it. I know it'll end, but that just makes me appreciate it more. The path I made, the road I built, is starting to pay off. And even if it's the death of me or anyone else, I will see it finished.