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WARNING
The following paragraphs are a work in progress.
They contain suicidal thoughts and poor writing skills.
Readers discretion is advised.
Chapter One: A failed suicide note – oder: “Hör auf zu heulen, Arschloch!”
i am about to kill myself. Literally. i have looped the knot around my neck, thrown it over the beam, and climbed all the way up Golgotha – a stupid little pile of shit that assembles my stupid little life.
i am about to kill myself. The scratchy rope will finally tie up all those dreams. Squeeze shut all those voices – wailing about who I could be, should be, want to be. But never will be, no matter how hard i try. Not because the world is dumb, ignorant, or just blind – but because i am! Too blind to see that i will never make it, no matter how much i want to believe i could. Too ignorant to accept that nobody has ever been waiting for me, gasping to hear what i have to say. And too dumb to understand that all i am is just a sad little person, mediocre at most, and pretty much unoriginal, even in suicide.
It’s cold in the room. Wind blows through the small gaps between the window frames and the poorly repapered walls. It sounds like whistling. The whistling of a desperate man standing on a horseback, with a scratchy rope looped around his neck. Except it doesn’t. Not even close. So, don’t let anyone try to tell you differently, especially not a fucking failure like me. (And ignore the stupid alliterations as well. They totally tuck.)
People tend to tell you that self-esteem is a good thing, right? That it’s helpful, useful, even desirable? Something you need to find if you ever want to be happy, and cling to if you want to stay that way?
Well, let me shit inside that bubble for you: Self-esteem is a fucking lie! It doesn’t make you a happier person; it makes you an angrier one! It doesn’t help you make your dreams come true; it just keeps you stuck inside them – like an iridescent bubble that makes the world around you dazzle so promising that you simply forget about the smell of your own shit piling up inside it. (And ignore the similes, metaphors, analogies, and all the other shit I have crapped all over you so far, like a suicidal asshole with murderous diarrhea.)
My way out of this bubble is the scratchy loop around my neck, tied to the brittle truss that might as well just break apart once I finally surrender my whole weight to its mercy –and take the whole goddamn shithole of a house down with me.
“Believe in yourself,” they say.
“You can be whoever you want to be,” they say.
“Fuck all of them with a butcher knife,” i say. Because none of this is true: You can’t just be whoever you want to be. Almost no one ever is. And the few who are, well, they probably wanted to be someone else in the first place. They wouldn’t tell you that, of course. Instead, they will write a pretty bad book on how they became exactly who they wanted to be – which most of the time turns out to be a pretty boring or quite annoying person. But people will buy this book – this lie – anyway. They will follow this person on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, TikTok, Youtube, lietomyfaceandmakemebelievemydumbopinionreallymatters.fuck – and all those other platforms that have helped a few thousand idiots to be seen and heard, and the other few billions still believe they could somehow if they really tried.
i am about to stop trying. I am about to start dangling, about six feet above the dusty hardboard floor, gently dandled by the wind creeping in through the window cracks; wind that will never sound like a wild west whistle, even if it tried.
All that trying has ever caused me is pain. Pain, and anger. SO MUCH ANGER! At first i didn’t even realize how angry i had become. How i was scrolling through newsfeeds that had nothing new to offer, just to silently swear at everyone who popped up. You are afraid of immigrants, don’t believe in climate change, and think something called Jesus Christ is gonna save us all? Go to hell, you hidebound hypocrite! You are afraid of climate change, want to help immigrants, and think something called humanity is gonna save us all? Go outside and see for yourself, you naive prick!
I still remember the first time i climbed through one of the windows on my computer screen, to actually find the person who had ruined journalism by writing one of those piece of crap pieces the dried-out mainstream media always advertises with the same, puke-provoking sentence: “… our author thinks…”
Sometimes i just really want to spend a day out there in the anti-social-media, and tell all those fuckers how i really feel about their wannabe-inspirational bullshit posts, their stupid selfies and their crappy opinion about who-the-fuck-knows-what. “25 TV shows you should watch while plugging your nose hairs”, “13 reasons why you should start eating unicorn buttholes”, “More rights for one-legged butterflies – less rights for limping dictator daughters.” “Keep clicking, keep baiting, keep commenting, keep liking, keep sharing, keep smiling, keep dreaming, keep fucking yourself with a butcher knife!”
I have chosen a rope instead. It somehow feels like the right way to go. Dying, but still hanging on, somehow. (Hahaha… not funny, and not very clever, either… so someone should probably make a reality TV show out of it.)
TV… another thing that makes me angry. A 24-hour-bullshit-sprinkler, filled with any imaginable opinion and interest, mashed together into a thin paste of insignificance. You lost 200 pounds on an all-ginger-ale-diet? Come sit your saggy ass down in my show and tell all those fat fucks out there how great you feel. You gained 200 pounds in 6 months, because all you drank was ginger ale, and now have a podcast about ginger-ale-intolerance-positivity? Come sit your fat ass down in my show and tell all those saggy fucks out there how great you feel.
If TV had designed lady liberty, it would look like an incontinent cartoon cat in a feather tank top smoking crack. And its inscription would read: “Give me your white nationalists, your radical feminists, your militant environmentalists, your alt right extremists, your gay rights activists, your hair loss positivists, your drug addicts – then lock them all together in a small room, hand them a bunch of butcher knifes, but make sure none of their feelings get hurt.“
Does it hurt to hang yourself? i mean, does it really, really hurt? More than living in this piece of shit world already hurts? And how long will that pain last? What will come after? If it’s heaven, probably nothing at all: silence and darkness, like a screen that has finally been turned off. If it’s hell… well, then things might just continue the way they are – more self-esteem, more throwbacks, more bullshit. Wouldn’t that be something? A twist, straight from a horror story, probably just another mediocre one.
But in the end, that’s what most people want, isn’t it? Mediocre. A story that’s scary, but not too scary, a song that’s loud, but not too loud, a joke that’s funny, but not too funny. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing that would somehow twist their brains open and force them to stare inside, or even just make them look away from their screens for just a split second.
Maybe i should check my phone one last time? Maybe someone replied? Maybe…
“Start your day with some cute goldfish baby memes”, “If all humans would stop farting for two hours, we could lower our carbon footprint by a quarter of an inch”, “Understand the latest outrage about this step uncle’s yellow snow paintings”, “5 half-organic alternatives to ginger-ale you need to try now!1!11“, “13 more reasons why you should start eating unicorn buttholes.”
i smash my phone against the poorly repapered wall, and tremble. i can feel the scratchy knot tighten around my neck, i can feel my feet losing grip of Golgotha.
Isn’t that how the world constantly feels lately? Like it’s only half a stumble away from hanging by its neck?
i stretch my arms out, wiggle them aimlessly through the air.
Wouldn’t it be better to just stop trying? To finally go down? Both for me and the world?
For one long, hopeful moment i feel how my whole weight finally surrenders itself to the rope, how the scratch slowly turns into a grip that gently squeezes the air out of my lungs. Then it’s all gone, and i am standing upright again.
“Fuck this. FUCK THIS! FUUUUUUCK THIS!!!” Fuck all you heartless musicians, playing along to same mainstream algo-rhythm. Fuck all you writers sticking band-aids onto festering extremities, instead of just sawing off the whole irremediable limb. “Why am i so angry? WHY AM i SO GODDAMNED AAAAANGRY??!!?”
i am an angry white man who is angry at angry white men – and everyone else! And the anger is spreading, like the fucking Corona Virus. From my online world to my offline world, from my cold empty attic all the way down to the comfy armchair in my living room, from my sad sober daydreams all the way into the safety of my drug infused nightmares.
It took over my house. It took over my thoughts. It took over my life. A life that was actually pretty okay, at least for a while. i had a job. i had a wife. i had friends and family. But i also had a dream. A big fat one that i kept feeding and feeding, until one day its stomach just ripped open like an overstuffed grocery bag, and everything came tumbling out onto the dirty driveway. Cans of overconfidence battered on the broken asphalt, boxes of half-baked ideas burst open, some jars of jealous reveries exploded, and some just rolled away and disappeared in the nearby gutter. But instead of just letting it all go, and accepting that most of it had already begun to rot long before i dropped it, i kneeled down into the dirt and started picking it up. Spoiled self-esteem, filthy fantasies, pasteurized hope covered in glass shards and dirt. I clutched onto it with shaky arms, dropping some of it on my way up the front porch, yelling at my wife when she tried to take part of the load off me. “Get the fuck out of my way!”
She left shortly after that, while i was still busy repacking my dreams, picking as many glass shards and pebbles out of them as i could find. When i noticed she was gone the poorly sealed plastic bags in my old, inefficient fridge freezer combination had already started to mold. I still kept them in there for a while, turned up the flash-freeze function, and hoped for the best. The next thing i remember was a loud static crackle in the walls that woke me from a nightmare-infused slumber sponsored by Xanax, followed by a loud bang. i took some more medicine and crawled back to sleep. When i woke up again, my fridge freezer combination had caught fire, and already torched the whole basement. i stumbled down the stairs, wagging thick clouds of smoke out of my way, as if i was trying to win the Burning House Breaststroke Olympics. i passed the fire extinguisher mounted to the hallway wall, but i wasn’t heading for that. i didn’t care what happened to the god damned house – hell no! – it was empty anyway, and had been for a while. i fell down half a flight of stairs, bopped up and kept swimming. The smoke was thicker now, less like water and more like goo. i reached the basement, kicked in the already half-burnt door, held my breath and stepped in. The fridge freezer combination was standing in the opposite corner, as far away from me as possible. The smoke burned my eyes, and pierced my lungs, even though i still wasn’t breathing. I dove in, knocked over my wife’s brand-new e-bike and a whole bunch of old furniture, swam forward, stroke for stroke, scratched my neck on a metal rack, cursed, coughed, gagged, vomited a little, and finally reached the burning monstrosity at the far end of the smoke pool. The metal door burnt a smoldering swath into the palm of my right hand, but i didn’t have time to feel the pain. i reached into the freezer – that felt more like an oven now – and wrenched the poorly sealed bags out. Only they didn’t move. The melting plastic had molded into the bottom of the freezer, cohering it to a sad, immovable mass. i wrapped both arms around the fridge freezer combination – a warm hug that left two more deep swaths on my skin – and started pulling. That was idiotic, and i knew it, even before the whole heavy bastard tipped forward. i thought it was the end, both for me and the fridge freezer combination, but it wasn’t, at least not yet. The upper metal door was still open when it buried me underneath its metallic monstrosity, and i somehow managed to climb inside before the door was blown away and the fridge freezer combination finally fell. I was stuck inside now, locked away from the fire by an inch-thick metal walls, with daydream plastic bags melted onto them, and my skin waiting to be next. At first it felt like a sauna, a little later it felt like a beefer, after a while it just felt like hell. Then the backside of the freezer burst open, wide enough for me to climb back out again. I held my breath and started swimming. First stroke, out of the basement. Second stroke, up the stairs. Third stroke, trough the living room. Fourth stroke, into the hallway. Fifth stroke, out of the front door. Flip turn, back inside, with only one thought burning in my head. Safe it! Safe what’s left of it, at least! Safe as much as you can! Sixth stroke, back into the hallway. i stumbled, coughed, dove face first into the smoldering carpet, and butterflied back into the flaming inferno. Sevenths stroke, to the bookshelf, almost knocking it down. Eights stroke, stopped halfway to grab a few things. Ninths stroke, up the stairs, with only one arm left to crawl through the smoke. Tenths stroke, past the bedroom door, right side of the face out of the flood, staring at myself, enwrapped in a nightmarish slumber. Elevenths stroke, just away from there, to the next room, collecting a few more items. Twelfths stroke, back out into the hallway, and further up. Thirteenths stroke, tumbling against the attic door, catching the doorknob and collapsing inside.
When i turned around again it was all gone. The fire, the smoke, and the anger. i was sitting on a small wooden chair, starring out into the woods, my eyes filled with tears. the house had stopped burning, and i had stopped dreaming.
But how did i start? When did i start? Why did i ever fucking start? A few of the things i claim responsible are now piled up underneath me: Stephen King’s IT (the first real grown-up book i’d ever read), Tolkien’s Silmarillion (that i’ve never even finished reading), a David Lynch DVD box (“It’s beautiful to have a great failure; there’s nowhere to go but up.” – what a fucking load of dinosaur shit!), a whole bunch of Alkaline Trio albums (illegally downloaded back when everything seemed free and just within reach), and a framed painting of Dylan lyrics forming his head (“Hey Mr. Tambourine Man”, shut your fucking face and find a real job, asshole!). And then, of course, a whole bunch of shit i have written – let me rephrase: tried to write! – a whole container full of wasted paper, ink, time and life.
In just a moment, whenever i find the courage to lift up out my cowardly quaking legs, this unstable tower of fruitless inspiration – my very own Golgotha – will finally collapse, and I will dangle above it, shaking, gagging, and probably whining like a starving dog. But only for a little while, a minute, maybe two; then it will all be over. Finally. Silence in the room. And silence in my head.
i don’t remember the last time when there was actually silence in my head. No angry shouting. No disenchanted whimper. No self-pitied serenade about how much i deserve to be someone i objectively am not. All i remember is when it got so loud in there that i couldn’t bear it anymore. When I finally realized that the pills had stopped working (the booze and weed had stopped working years ago). When i had been lying awake in the middle of the night, as usual, stuck in the creepy carousel of thoughts and voices that goes just a little bit too fast to get out, and a little bit too slow to actually feel like riding the one-eyed plastic horse you are clamping onto.
But i am prattling again. Something I don’t deserve to do, because I am no one. Even in suicide, the final act of empowerment over an existence I have never had any control over, i remain no one. And i deserve nothing. Because no one gives a shit about any of this. Just the fact that my suicide live stream to lietomyfaceandmakemebelievemydumbopinionreallymatters.fuck, has 0 views, 0 likes and 0 comments is proof of that – in spite of the sappy moral quote I have pasted above (“Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect”, a random internet find when googling “sappy moral quotes”) and the glossy filter I have forced over my dying face. 0. Zero. Not even an offensive comment about my weight or my face. Not even a dislike. Nothing. Does that make me angry? Sad? A little, I guess, but…
„Hör auf zu heulen, Arschloch!” – Stop whining, asshole!