Big Bad World

Most writers seem like perfectly decent people to me; it’s just that they’re better at expressing themselves in writing than in speech. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that they’re damn hard to live with—they make everything, or at least I do, way too complex, so it takes a long time to get out of a rut, and so, even though they want to, they end up spending a lot of time alone. Struggling with their own mind.

But this time, it was different. Okay, I sometimes ignored the fact that I was still living with a family—the responsibilities that came with it—but I wasn’t a “child” anymore, I didn’t want to depend on my family; they always demanded so much emotional effort from me during the cold wars between a father who was so gentle that it even hurts to express a hint of criticism, and a mother who didn’t mince words—and was consequently accused of being way too harsh. And I—I was caught in the middle, between two people as different as David and Goliath, but neither dared to say or voice anything, and certainly not in front of the children. Unless I opened my big mouth.

It all came down to the fact that it was time to leave this nest; that’s how it felt to me. With a sense of urgency, but at the same time a great sense of helplessness, because what did I really know about the real world, other than what I saw on the socials; a terrifying monster that had crawled out of the cracks, one that would devour people like me whole if I didn’t climb my way through it with self-control, discipline, and a deaf ear to others’ problems.

Well, despite that—and the respect I had for them, because life hadn’t been easy for them—I still wanted to go my own way. Twenty-two, for heaven’s sake—I thought about living, working, and studying on my own, but that would be nearly impossible; I had hardly any money and didn’t know where to start.

I saw the people in front of me smiling as I stared straight ahead on the train; I thought, “Are my eyes still swollen because I held back my tears?” Suddenly, the fear from my dream resurfaced—the beast with snake heads. Was it really coming back? It raced through my heart faster than I could handle. I shuddered—write, write, and don’t think; that’s what I had to do. That was how I could survive and hope for her, she by the sea.

I arrived in the afternoon. I wanted to talk to her and knew I wouldn’t take the train back. I’d just sleep on the beach or…

She wasn’t there.

The worst-case scenario I could imagine at that moment—what now, crawling back to my room? Or…? I called home. We had to talk this through.