I don’t know what I am thinking. I am furiously confused. And hurt.
But in a way, I do know. Why the circle of hurting and being hurt moves in streaks.
It was nothing. Just a few soft words, between hundred apartments, between thousand houses, filled with millions of people. And each of them, started breathing, breathed, stopped breathing. They thought and cooked and remained silent. And something was breaking inside of me. A small, thinly spun string had stood where the broken pieces now lie. It wasn’t a big fracture on the floor, just a single shattered glass in an endlessly large and shimmering display case.
And even though I knew how insignificant our time was, it all still seemed so gloomy.
I knew I had seen worse. Chandeliers hab been broken before and now I was still standing calmly on the rails in East-Berlin.
But as much as I forced myself to ignore everything and tell myself that she was just one of many, just another name on a grotesquely accurate list on my screen, I couldn’t believe myself.
The wind was cold again and I felt my bones tremble. I mechanically got out of the subway and walked over the bridge. The television tower glowed and failed to save me today. I looked like an old man in a too small, too narrow body. The shoulder pads of my jacket stuck out like a bull’s horns in late august. My pitch-black hair was blowing in the icy wind. I was finally dark and dangerous again. Only my inside was weak and jelly-like, like the yolk of poached eggs.
“I’ll show you what something casual, superficial looks like,” I thought as I got on the next train. I thought of all the people who suffered because of me. Because I was cold like Berlin. Unpredictable like New York. And weary like Paris. It was a pleasure for me to see how they loved me and suffered from it like from a fatal disease. Just like I had suffered for him. I had power over people and I enjoyed that.
But it was like any other drug. Useless. Just a replacement to suffocate a grueling emptiness inside of me. I wanted to open up, be vulnerable and finally love again. And I really thought she would be the one.
If I had to describe the pain, it would look like a negative parabola. Everything was always fine at first. You live and enjoy, you are annoyed and sometimes sad. Everything runs on one level. You glide smoothly through your coordinate system and nothing happens.
And suddenly something changes. New functions, new graphs.
You slowly slide up. You are nervous when you see her in front of you. You easily drag her into your world. Until it drops and you reach the climax. Everything sparkles above the surface. You are breathing euphoria and everything seems to float endlessly. The sun is standing high over Berlin and you are holding her hand. Everything could stay that way. But you know that all precious things are determined by their finiteness.
Weeks later you stand under the door frame by the colorful park. You want to kiss her and she pulls you away. The distance between you gapes like the rocky mountains in the Himalayas. She doesn’t want you because you are different.
You go, you don’t look back and notice how you slowly fall down. How the rails fall apart and your body stings. Somehow you are empty and angry with yourself. You shouldn’t have opened yourself.
The same ending. Just a different name.
