He, Who had died
I speak, out of selfishness
Do you ever have this feeling, that time has passed way slower, than it actually has? A week, that feels like two. A month, that may have had at least six weeks. A year, that never ended?
It is this February, that gives me this feeling, because the last four years seemed like a decade. Those last four years, in which I died.
At this point, I may as well say: Hello stranger.
I think, that we do not tell the stories of the average people enough. It is kind of sad, for that there are literally millions of unique stories to be told. But society ignores them, which leads to us not caring for others anymore.
So here I go. If you come here from time to time, to read political stuff or short stories, be assured, that there is plenty to come.
This day though, I will tell you the story of mine. Who I am and how I got there. For anyone, who cares about me, or fellow humans in general, I will tell a story of pain, of suffering, of someone embracing hope. I will explain, why the month of February is the one, I fear the most and why I tend to say, that I had died in the past.
Three steps towards the edge
I could obviously say, that all of this begins in the year 1994, but it does not really. I have no memory of my early childhood. I do not know, if it is suppressed or just genuinely forgotten.
This story truly starts somewhere around my age of eight, so approximately in 2002. In that year, my parents divorced. It was strange at that time. I literally did not know, what this meant. At that age, I did not understand the concept of hatred. Sure, I knew what anger, fury and envy were, but hatred was an unknown thing to me. Still, my parents started to hate each other, from the bottom of their heart.
It is hard to explain, what happened to me and my three years older sister during that time, but I can say for me at least, that I was too young to understand, but old enough to notice.
Please do not misinterpret. I love my parents, both, but indirectly, they harmed me in the following years. One should not learn hatred from those, who he loves the most.
A couple of years later, my sister parted ways with my father. They seemed to hate each other even more than my parents did initially. Now, I was the only link between the split family. I stood in the middle of the two parties, hating each other. I felt like the catalyst, through which the let go their frustration.
I was too young to understand, but I was old enough to get damaged.
For those, who do not know, in Germany, there are only two stages of school (excluding kindergarten). You switch directly from four years of elementary school to high school at the age of ten or eleven, sticking to that school for another eight to nine years. My transition to this high school was pure horror. I never was popular anyway. I was quite awkward. My social skills were bad. I had almost no friends and my closest friend just had moved to the USA.
The few ones remaining turned away soon after.
I suffered from bullying.
It scarred me.
I do not remember a lot of my past, mostly facts and objective knowledge. I remember, that I cried a lot, almost every day. I remember, that I got sick a lot. I remember, that every night, when I went to bed, I hoped, that I would not wake up the next day. I remember, that I felt alone in this endless world. And I remember, that it was at the age of thirteen, that I wanted to kill myself, for the first time in my life.
A couple of years passed. I stayed down a year, to get out of my social environment, but it only reduced bullying by a margin for a short time.
This pause did not heal me, nothing could at that age. But it gave me room to breathe. Staying down a year in school helped me in more ways, than I could imagine.
Somewhere around that time, my childhood friend came back from the USA. I shall name him James at this point. His importance is not to be ignored, for he always was a friend of mine, without any condition.
Due to sticking to sixth (out of twelve) grade for another year, I met someone. A girl, I fell in love with, from the first day I saw her. Let us name her Kaya.
This might sound ridiculous, but I sincerely did not know, what true love was until I had met her.
Somehow, over the course of two years, she fell for that awkward, unattractive, out of shape, nerdy boy as well, though both of us were so shy, that we only became a couple in the summer of 2009. With the age of fifteen, I felt loved by a stranger for the first time.
I could have been like this forever. Doing fine at school, having Kaya and James around me, as my heart and my soul, ignoring everything bad around me.
I was happy.
Until four years ago, the February of 2013.
I loved Kaya. I sincerely do not doubt, that I could have been with her until the end of time.
She did not.
In hindsight, it seems rather obvious. She distanced herself from me, both mentally and physically. She avoided me. Whenever a relationship breaks apart, it always equally is the fault of both. That is, how the very principle of relationships work. It was my fault, for being blind towards her desires. I can see that now, though it does not help.
So, when the February of 2013 came, I had already known it for about a month, but it was too surreal for me to understand. Because of my bad memory (2–3 years of backwards range), as far as I could actively think back, I had been with her.
So, she went away.
She left.
And a couple of minutes after she had gone, I realized, that she would not come back.
What happened next on that day, seemed to happen without the relation of time. I knew, I did not want to be alone in this hour. I called James, asking, if he could come over and while speaking this one simple question, I collapsed, bursting into tears.
When he arrived, I had not stopped crying yet. In delirium, I showed him the pictures of my holiday in Dubai, taken in October of the last year. I showed them to him, because I wanted to distract myself. I also showed them to him, because I had no one to show them to before.
Kaya had not wanted to see them for the last half year.
The age of darkness
The first and only thought, I had after the breakup, even before James arrived, was very simple, but devastating and shaping my entire future, up to this point: Do I hate her or not?
I chose not. I am at least insecure, if this was the right choice. Obviously, from the outside perspective, it seems the only valid choice, and with obligatory, pretended wit and wisdom, we all would say, it is the only possible choice.
The damage though, this choice did to me, is a solid counter argument to that bullshit.
Within one day, I fell into depression. I spiraled downwards, accelerating every day. A week after, my entire personality had changed. I was awkward before, extremely aggressive already and quite conservative, almost right-winged politically.
After this week, though, I was a socially anxious misanthropist, a person, who hates humans, just because they are humans.
All the positivity in my life had vanished. My parents did not understand me. The only friend I had, never possessed the emotional depth to handle an eighteen years old depressive, damaged kid.
Within half a year, I sincerely, actively wished to end my life. It was the second time, I became suicidal. Hollowness was the only feeling I had. Hollowness and hatred towards everything.
I died.
Whatever existed before that year, It ceased being.
Those, who have never suffered like this, will probably say, that I am being overdramatic. To those I say:
I envy you. I honestly hope, that you can keep that naïve perspective; That you never need to understand.
Society broke me. Mental illness is something, that so many people suffer from and the very least possess knowledge about. The sentence, that I heard most often, damaging me severely, was ‘It could be worse. / Others have it worse.’
Never say that to anyone. Yes, there are others, that suffer more. But no, this saying does not help at all.
Let me explain the stupidity of this phrase with a simple metaphor:
Imagine you are on fire, burning to death, and then someone comes by, which you ask, to put the flames out and the only thing they say is: “At least you are not drowning.”
Against the odds, I survived 2013, partly thanks to a psychiatrist, whom I had started visiting in winter.
I finished school in 2014, even though I was home half the time during the school years, because I literally had no motivation, no drive, to live. I just existed.
I say with full honesty, that I had died, because I was not living at that time.
I had no mind. I had no more opinions. I had no goals, no visions, no cravings. I just was.
I only had pain. Metal pain, so horrible, that it physically hurt me, not by making me sick, but only by being physical pain, striking through my entire body at once.
I glimpsed into darkness, and it looked back at me.
Over one and a half year, I forgot, what makes a living person.
I forgot, how to feel joy.
I forgot the feeling of being save.
I forgot love.
After finishing school, I did the dumbest thing possible. I went directly to university instead of taking a break.
Karlsruhe is quite the ugly city. On top of that, the people in (southern) Germany are so uncommunicative, that it is wondrous, how we have build a functional society.
In Karlsruhe, I was alone like never in the past. I can vividly remember, that I had almost killed myself during half the year I had spent there.
Why did I not do it? Don’t ask me. I would say it was 50:50 and I just randomly chose not to.
After that though, change occurred, even if I did not notice yet.
Darkness only is, so that light can shine brighter
My process of healing actually started way earlier, though it was of different kind. The reason for that lies within the depth of my depression. It was not only about the pain Kaya inflicted, by tearing a hole in my heart. The factors of my past also awakened again.
My parents could not help me as much over the past years, because they partially were a problem.
I cannot stress enough, that I love them, although I must admit, that they were not much of a help back then.
In 2012, I had swapped school. Bullying in my old school escalated to a level, where I had to leave that place. After the switch, I was doing surprisingly fine. I had no social problems, at least none of major importance. I even made some loose friendships.
One of these friends was rather special. He is, like I am nowadays, against the distance, that reigns supreme in our society. He does not care about the rules of distance, instead befriending everything and everyone in his way.
Out of pure randomness, he invited me to his home one day, when we had a four-hour break in our schedule. With the Why-Not-mentality, I accepted the invitation.
And I came home.
This family of his — what now is the family of mine — is too good for this world. They took me as one of their own. Loving parents, three siblings, and a selfless, loving relation within their system, as I had never known. They saw my suffering from the very first day. They cared about me, a stranger, like no one else. They gifted me the feeling of safety.
I love my parents, my father, my sister and my mother. They are my family.
But it just occurred, that now, I have two families.
Thinking about the time in Karlsruhe, from October ’14 to April ’15, there are very many bad memories. I quit my studies after only two months in, because I was sick so often and I did not understand anything of physics (Don’t study that). I could barely sleep, suffered from nightmares and sleep deprivation. I had severe problems eating, because i felt neither hunger nor desire to eat. I had virtually no social life. Only James lived there as well, but he had no time for anything, because his studies took it all.
Most of all, I was trapped in a spiral of negative thoughts. Listening to myself, was the biggest danger for me. It was the peak of my depression.
Although, Karlsruhe was horrible, it had something good. Two things, that started to repair my broken mind.
The first were those, who stopped me from killing myself, even if they do not know: Friends.
Back in that day, I was addicted to video games. Diving in those virtual, surreal worlds dragged me out of my corrupted mind and gave me a break from a painful existence.
I also watched a lot of streams, mainly CG Acclamator. It came, that he set up a mumble server for his stream subscribers, to play games with and talk to each other.
Many people say to me, that an online friendship cannot be the same as ‘normal’ friendship. To those, I can sincerely reply: Fuck off.
With the age of twenty, I had made friends, real friends, for the first time (excluding James, who is more of a brother). A bunch of people, as awkward and unsocial as me, who did not care though. They were my haven, a place where I could go to have fun and laugh. Two years have passed since then and I still can call them friends. I aim to never change that.
The second change, Karlsruhe brought with itself, was one, I could only make myself.
It was not planned, not even foreseen. It happened out of a sudden. During my time of loneliness, I thought about a lot of philosophical questions. One day, in a café I visited a lot (even though it was hella expensive), I asked myself: “What is more valuable: Pure freedom or pure peace?”
The answer to that question, did not instantaneously end my suffering. It did not wipe away my pain.
Instead, it gave me a path. The path I eventually chose. As soon, as I answered the question, that aggressive, right-winged misanthropist became a left-winged, altruistic pacifist.
This answer, that peace is the most important thing in this world, was existential, because I had asked myself the same question before, not regarding all people, but only one single person and back then I had answered it the same way.
“Do I hate her or not?”
Only then I realized, that not hating her, would lead me to having to love her, until I could let go of her. The right choice was not to deny hate, but to seek love, for that love is always better than hate.
On that day, in that café, I had died the second time, though this time, I ascended through rebirth.
I moved out of Karlsruhe, back to my parents, in the spring of 2015. I was still quite the way from being healthy. I still was depressive. It took over one and a half years to cure the wounds, that my past had inflicted.
I travelled to Berlin for three months, not working there, not doing anything productive. I wasted a lot of money of the budget, that was intended for my studies. Those three months were a turning point for me. I got rid of my shyness. I defeated the daemon of social anxiety. An achievement, I am still rather proud of.
I learned to live again, slowly but steadily.
After that, I did nothing for a long time. A great choice. A choice I should have made in the summer of 2014, after finishing school.
I enjoyed wasting time, letting the world pass without me. I took a break, that I was in dire need of. (My parents were not that happy though)
Pretty much a year ago, in February of ’16, I was ready to join the world again. From one night to the other, I stopped playing video games, I started writing and I went out to meet people — random strangers — to listen to their stories.
These people gave me the last piece to myself, that I was missing:
Love. The understanding and ability, to not only love someone special, but everyone.
He, who has survived
The present. We have arrived. The February of 2017, after four years, which feel like a decade.
I do not know, what the future brings. I cannot say, if I will be fine. Someone, who was depressive once, is more likely to fall back again.
Though I can proudly say of myself:
I am happy. I adore the beauty of life.
I am joyful. My heart feels like dancing around the world.
I feel save. I am guarded by those many around me.
I am living.
I am alive.
