Pierre trotted through the park listlessly, which he always had to cross when he walked home. He scattered the last leaves that remained from the fall and the rustling under his feet left a smile on his face. He felt cut off from society. How he would have loved to go to a friend and pour his heart out to him. But there was no one there. It wasn't that he didn't know anyone, but Pierre couldn't get through to these people on the personal level he needed, to be able to trust someone. It was easy for him to have some small talk with new acquaintances. He knew just enough about people to greet them and ask a few follow-up questions, like a lengthy conversation that was splitted up into parts. But if the conversation lasted longer than a few minutes, he didn't know what to ask or talk about and they waived goodbye. It was as if he were looking out into the ocean from the deck of a ship and could still see fish and life a few meters below the surface, but underneath there was only cold emptiness and darkness. He wanted to disappear, but what he really wanted was to be found. Someone who wouldn't talk about him behind his back and secretly despise or pity him.
Pierre reached his house and shuffled to the mailbox. He hated the post. Nothing good ever came in the mail. This time there were three letters. The last one was from Claire. He recognized her handwriting. It was neat and curved. No letter was larger than the other. This letter had taken longer to reach him than usual. But even the arrival of her letter did little to brighten up his mood. He shoved the three envelopes unopened into his bag, entered his house and slammed the door shut behind him.
I thought about everything that had happened before that fateful day. I still couldn't believe that I had been cut off from this life, how everything had led to me lying down here now. Like flashes of light, little episodes from the time before lit up inside of me. The bridge, the cold, the impact. Why had I been there? The fateful day had been erased from my mind. Maybe an even longer time? My last memory I can recall, was me getting ready for university. The alarm clock, the tea, the streetcar. The memories were fraying.
Positive memories mingled with negative ones. I liked my time at the university. I liked what I was studying, I liked my university and the facilities. In the beginning, I made a few acquaintances that were close to friendships. But as time went by, conversations became mere greetings and at some point everyone was in such a hurry that I found myself sitting alone at the dining hall table. At first it didn't bother me that much, but at some point I wondered if I belonged there.
My silver lining at that time was a special person. After our first encounter, I never thought we would meet again. A few weeks later, when I had almost forgotten about her, we met in a café by chance. She was sitting alone at a table reading a book about the French Revolution. I had just returned home from a semester abroad in Paris and asked if I could sit with her. Our passion for France brought us closer and a single meeting turned into many. She spoke French and the language of love. I motivated her to enrol at my university. She conquered the faculty leaderboards and my heart. At the end of a turbulent summer, I proposed to her and she immediately said yes. At the same time, she was accepted for a semester abroad at the Sorbonne. Our wedding night was the night before she left. I accompanied her for two weeks, our honeymoon, sort of. When I flew home alone, the doubts and loneliness set in. I never got enough sleep because of the time difference. I missed the touching. The distance to her was no longer just physical. And I encountered other women who promised an easier life. But in the end, I stayed faithful to her. When she came back, our wounds healed and we got back together. The happiness that had turned into the opposite in the months before moved back into my house with her. She accepted a small job, which was offered to her, right where we met for the first time.
I never thought it would all come down to this, back then in the library.
“Where do I find the books on political history?” Pierre now asked, outwardly confident but inwardly still agitated. The most important thing for Pierre now was to find something in common with the charming librarian. He hoped that he might have aroused her interest with his mixture of politics and history. Politely distancing herself, the librarian replied that they were located on the second floor. She smiled in a concluding way without making any further effort to talk to him.
“You know, I used to come here a lot as a child. I could hardly stop reading the books over the summers. It has really changed a lot.” Pierre tried to open up a wider field for a conversation, but the librarian remained professional. “I'm glad you've found your way back to us, I hope you like the new layout.” She smiled again, politely distant. Pierre tried further. “Oh yes, it's in the spirit of the times! Do you know the premises from before? Are you from around here?” Was that one question too much? Pierre was now sending out a clear signal to take the conversation to a personal level. “No, I'm new here,” said the librarian and stifled the tender budding plant of their conversation by asking if there was anything else she could help him with.
Only now did Pierre notice a simple, shiny ring on her finger. He had gone too far. The door, which was only ajar, crashed into its massive lock. His chance was gone. Pierre felt the world that lay heavy on his shoulders, only lifted for a moment by her smile and his light heart, crashing back down on him and squeezing him. He wanted to escape, to be alone, to pity himself. He briefly thanked the librarian, turned around and appeared to actually want to go to the second floor. At least he was able to keep up his façade on the outside. At the foot of the stairs, Pierre once more glanced furtively at the information deck. He pretended to take in the new furnishings, but his gaze was caught once again by the librarian, who appeared like an angel in the glistening light of the evening sun.
Pierre turned his eyes away from her and walked up the carpet-lined staircase without looking back.
The look of my loved ones was painful for me. I saw the tears in their eyes, the dying hope, comparisons to my former self. Every movement of my eyes was interpreted in the sense that I would get back on my feet, that I would be 'the old me' again. I wanted to scream. Were they telling this to themselves to give me hope or were they lying to themselves so they wouldn't have to deal with reality? Even in the face of my death, couldn't they come to terms with the possibility that I could cease to exist? I wanted to shake them, wanted my justice, wanted someone to understand me. But all I got was pity. Pity and sorrow. They wanted me to play along in their perfidious game that ignored what was going on. In which only the others ever die. Because dealing with dying would ultimately mean making your own possibility of death part of your thoughts. I felt as if the interpretation of my fate was no longer in my hands, as if it was a matter for others to decide how to deal with my death. As if they were shouting “You put us here in such circumstances and shake our all-obscuring world, so you have forfeited the right to decide how your death should be dealt with.” But what did death actually mean? Would I really die? After everything that had happened in my life, should it really be over now? It's also hard for me to picture my non-existence. Was I being too dramatic? Was there any hope of breaking out of this prison? May I hope? A lot of questions piled up inside of me as soon as I stood on the threshold of non-existence. As if, just before I understood, was being pushed back into life and hope by my human weaknesses. I felt weak. My dramatic anger gave way to a desire to be cared for and loved. I wanted to be a child again, to have all my worries taken away, to be talked to and to feel warm and safe, even though it sensed that disaster was waiting behind the safe walls. I let my loved ones pour their pity over me with tacitly acquiescence, awaited it like a warm shower of rain and bathed in my self-pity.
On his way home, Pierre regularly passed a library. It was a small branch of the municipal library. It had only recently been renovated. Pierre had fond memories of this institution. He had been a regular here in his childhood and had devoured piles of books over the summer. He wistfully remembered the time when he had still been passionate about anything. He hadn't been to the library for a long time. He hadn't had a book in his hand for a long time either. A mixture of longing and nostalgia drove him to the entrance of the library.
When he entered the newly renovated entrance hall, he hardly recognized the facilities. The new interior was a mixture of brushed steel, concrete and glass. Disoriented, he made his way to the newly introduced information deck. He rang the bell at the information desk as it was vacant.
A young lady emerged from the room behind the desk. Seeing her suddenly jolted Pierre out of his lethargy. It is said that the first three seconds decide whether someone is perceived as attractive or not. In Pierre's case, it only took a fraction. Her curly hair fell gently on her shoulder and her lively eyes radiated a warmth and joie de vivre that stirred Pierre's insides. He didn't hear her question about how she could help him, which she underlined with a gentle smile, as he had to focus on breathing rhythmically. When he had somewhat pulled himself together, his voice trembled and he could hardly speak, although his mind was clear. He wondered about his physical reaction. It almost seemed as if his own body was being taken away from him by their traction. His goal, which had not been clear to him in the beginning, now shifted entirely to her. He hadn't had a feeling like this for a very long time and knew that if he wanted to carry on this interaction in any way, this moment was his only chance. It was one of those doors that would open suddenly, demanding spontaneous commitment in order not to miss the opportunity. Pierre thought for a moment about what he should say so that their conversation wouldn't come to an abrupt end at the information desk. He looked her straight in the eye, inhaled imperceptibly and slowly turned his inner joy into an equally gentle smile.
I heard footsteps in the corridor again, but this time the footsteps gave me a familiar feeling. I knew those footsteps. They are as unique as a voice. When I was a schoolboy lying in bed, I could identify my family members by the way they walked up the stairs. My father had a heavy step, almost dropping onto the stairs with a crash, and my mother had a rather light, almost inaudible, but quick step. The footsteps I heard now had familiar elements, but there were too many at once to be able to determine with certainty who it was.
Discomfort rose up inside of me. I didn't know if I wanted to see anyone now. I already felt threatened and cut off from my own shell, how could I face my beloved ones and feel safe with them? Would it cause even more anxiety in me if I couldn't even feel a connection to them?
The door swung open all at once and the first shape that burst into the room brought in a surge of warmth and its love pierced through the cocoon that had formed around me all at once, filling up my heart. I saw my wife. She dropped something from her hands and stormed towards me and into my field of vision. With tears in her eyes, she threw her arms around my neck and sobbed. My body was numb, but I could feel her breath in my ear and I felt something again. An intimate touch. A shiver in my body. I looked over my wife's shoulder and saw that my mother and father had also stepped in. My mother tried to hide her own pain under a tortured smile, which she was only partly successful at; my father was a stranger to feeling anything at all. My mother had picked up what my wife had dropped. In her one hand was a book, which was due to my wife's profession, in the other a net of oranges, which I loved more than anything. The look of my beloved ones pierced through my shell, drilled a hole in it and let a beam of warmth fall on my already chilled heart. And yet the cocoon remained, stable and cold. One swallow does not make a summer.
Pierre had had enough. He made his way home, even though he didn't know what he wanted there. He generally didn't know where he would want to be, even if he had every option available to him. Many doors had already opened up to him, but he usually had a bad timing and in trying to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible, he missed every single one.
Pierre skipped his last seminar, even though it was his favorite class of the week, and walked home. He strolled roughly in the direction of his house and let his mind wander. Occasionally he walked home, because the long way back also opened up the breadth of his thoughts. But today his thoughts were jumping from one topic to another without following any particular train of thought. It annoyed him. He was dissatisfied with himself without being able to give an exact reason why. He wanted something, but had no object to direct his will towards.
The only way home for Pierre was leading over a bridge. Pierre didn't like walking across it, but the monstrosity of the barren environment of the strait that the bridge spanned fascinated him. As Pierre stepped onto the bridge, cars roared along beside him and trains below. He heard many mechanical noises and also the resonance of the bridge. When he looked up, two monstrous bridge pillars swung up into the sky, their tops disappearing in low-hanging clouds. Pierre felt dizzy when he looked up. He felt unsafe on this bridge, which he had walked along several times before, but liked the feeling of being at the mercy of a primal force of wind, water and steel. Here he was a pawn of the elements.
When Pierre had crossed exactly half of the bridge, he stepped up to the railing and looked down onto the roaring water. Pierre felt the primal forces strongly here. Below him was the hostile, cold maw that swallowed everything that came close to him, the life-threatening height and the wind that seemed to push him into the abyss. Only he, Pierre, his will and the steel construction erected by engineers kept him on this side of the life. He liked the idea that he had something under control, that his will was powerful and kept him alive. Pierre leaned slightly over the railing and stared into the abyss. His palms and feet started to sweat. And yet the abyss somehow attracted him.
When I regained consciousness, I felt different than before. I had the feeling of flowing back into a shell, like air pouring into a balloon. Except that the air was my mind and the shell was my body. Every time I woke up, my body became more alien to me. I was afraid to make another attempt to move my limbs. Afraid of being disappointed and feeling that panic again. So I preferred to keep the illusion that I could move if I wanted to.
I glanced around the room and found it unchanged. There was no substance to perceive a change in time. I felt apathetic. As hope faded and time stood still, the energy also drained from my body. I wondered what else I could hope for.
My gaze wandered to my hand, which was still lying there as motionless as before. The light brushed gently across the skin and illuminated the fading scar that ran across the back of my hand. It was a relic of being in too much of a hurry. I wanted to catch a train and was already late. At the same time, I wanted to leave my room tidy and quickly washed up a cup. In my haste, the cup broke in the sink and the shards sliced the back of my hand. I missed my train and stayed, just like the scar that accompanied me from that day on and was a constant reminder not to rush things too much.
I saw this scar, I saw my hand and my body. The slightly bulging belly that I could never train off because I loved chocolate, my feet that appeared at the end of the comforter and the contours of my legs. All of this was familiar to me, it was my body after all. And yet this familiar shell that had always surrounded me was suddenly alien to me. What had always been available was inaccessible. So close and yet so far away. I was struck by a new fear. The outside world seemed alien and threatening. Even my own body was so foreign to me that I wanted to shake it off, get rid of the heavy ballast. But I was anchored in this strangeness. Like a grain of sand in an hourglass. I didn't belong in this sterile environment and yet I was there, exposed to the look of everyone else.
For Pierre, it was one of those days when nothing worked out. He was late for class, spilled a glass of water, lost his key and a few other annoying but unmentionable circumstances occurred. Pierre was in a bad mood. It felt like the world was against him and he interpreted every interaction with him as hostile.
He had tried approached a group of fellow students over the last few weeks, summoning up all his courage and overcoming his shyness to do so. A fellow student in the group seemed to be interested in him, but loose conversations did not turn into deeper ones. The fellow student in question was accepted in his group, which occasionally organized activities that seemed fun. Pierre would have liked to have been invited to one of these, but hadn't yet plucked up the courage to ask if he could join them. The other students in the group didn't seem particularly interested in Pierre and he wondered if the loose connection to the more talkative student was enough to legitimize his joining. He also wondered whether he himself would enjoy participating in the group activities, as he found the other participants despicable. But he felt a longing for company. When Pierre entered the dining hall of his university around noon, he looked around while he pretended to be busy so that no one would notice his loneliness and lack of belonging. He saw the aforementioned group sitting in the corner of the dining hall. It looked like everyone was in a great mood. He heard some of the participants laughing. Pierre headed towards the group, somewhat indecisively, looking down so that it looked like he was heading in their direction by chance. He kept looking up briefly, hoping that the more talkative fellow student would notice him and invite him to join them. When Pierre looked up again, he saw the aforementioned fellow student turning his head away from the direction Pierre was coming from. He made no effort to greet him. Had he seen him? Now he was saying something to the group and suppressed laughter pierced through to Pierre. Were they laughing at him? Pierre changed direction inconspicuously and walked past the table, pretending not to have noticed the group at all.
When I woke up from my unconsciousness, nothing had changed in my situation. I was still lying in the same room, with the same white walls and the same lilac bush on the table. Only it looked like the lilac bush had moved a little closer to death. It wasn't a specific physical observation, but its whole appearance seemed a little flabbier, a little more transient, no longer as fresh and firm as one would expect given its days. My hand was still on the bed, in the same position as a few minutes ago. Or hours. Or days.
I didn't know how long I'd been out. But the stabbing pain when I opened my eyes didn't last as long and the time it took to get used to the brightness was shorter. My senses became sharper. Apart from my sense of smell, I could perceive my surroundings clearly in the field of vision I had left. I heard footsteps in the corridor, saw the dying lilacs and felt the sharp wind on my face as it cut my cheeks through the open window. The footsteps in the corridor came closer and suddenly I was gripped by a longing for company, a longing to drain into someone else's world through their eyes. I wanted to scream, to draw attention to myself, but as soon as the impulse to scream, triggered by anxiety, was supposed to pass to my body, this power somehow leaked out of my body. I could no longer reach my muscles. They refused to obey. I could neither scream nor shout, let alone speak.
I panicked whether I could still swallow when everything in my body was numb and immobile, whether I could still breathe. My heart was beating faster, I felt, imagined or not, a higher production of saliva in my mouth and my swallowing reflex could no longer keep up with the panic rising in me. I also started to hyperventilate. It felt like claustrophobia in my own skin. But there was no escape from it. I wanted to scream, but my mouth remained silent. The stifled scream dragged me back into nothingness.