The never ending John

                Everything about John so far, every story, every death, every promise of change. Fuck that. You can forget all about it. People don't change. People never change. Put a man in the same situation ten times over, and ten times over he will do the same thing, the same mistake. And maybe he's insane. Because after all, doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome is indeed the act of a crazy man. Or maybe he's just John. Same old, same familiar John. The John that thought he died, and never was so wrong in his existence. The John that hoped he could, the idealist, the hypocrite. He's always there, same place next life. It's almost like every time he dies he rises with the same structure. Just as extraordinary, just as stupid, just as fucked. And another death comes way too late and changes nothing whatsoever. And it's nobody's fault but John's. He tried fooling himself, like everyone does, lurking around concepts and ideas that one feeds to himself in order to feel better about their existence.

                John kept saying to himself, repeating to himself, that the world is fucked, that the past is better, that he's only stuck for now and that he'll get out of it sooner or later. But the truth is, it's all a bunch of self medicated crap that he needed to feed to himself in order to create his comfort zone. John said the world is fucked. Wrong. The world is fine, it always was and it always will be. It's John that has a problem, it's the people who are fucked, and the people that keep fucking, and not in a good way. It always goes like this, like a vicious circle. People fuck John, so John fucks himself up just to feel in the trend, and then of course that John fucks others too, because a screw-up never stays a screw-up without spreading the plague. And he's sorry he's fucked. But he can't help it. Or even that's a lie. Maybe, just maybe there was a point somewhere in time when he could have done something, said something to break the vicious circle. But that moment is long gone, and this is this, and John stays John for now and forever. There's only one death that can set him free, and that's not a death that he's ready to accept.

                There would be no arise of the phoenix, no coming back from that one. And John could never die like that. That's why he must keep going. After all, life remains a bitch. John has to get used to that, just how the world got used to him. No more floating, no more escaping, no more running away. The world is never going to change, and the mind quickly runs out of corners to hide in. And so, the never ending never changing John Doe must hit his head over and over on the brick wall that is reality until he learns that there's no way of breaking it, there's just acceptance and acceptance.

The day John thought he was a poet

You know so well those glittering eyes
That burn your heart like suns from a thousand skies.
They laughed and they cried an made you believe,
But now you're condemned to sit and watch them leave.

You know so well those rose petal lips
Filling your heart with unbearable bliss.
In kisses they crushed you and threw you so high,
But now is the time to kiss them goodbye.

You know so well that silky long hair
Covering her face like a wedding gown's veil.
Stroking your heart all your leashes they tore,
But now in your pain they can comfort you no more.

You know so well that you once had them all
And above all the voice that filled your restless soul.
When you had them together you could feel no pain,
But now you have lost them, you need novacaine.

                                                                   Painkillers,
                                                                         John Doe.

John lost in time

                Funny guy, this so called John Doe. If he could find himself half a brain, he could even be average. Too bad that brains don't grow on trees, and his mind doesn't really have the room to accommodate one at the moment.  It's just too busy getting filled with day to day crap and cynical nonsense to be forgotten after two seconds and then rethought half an hour after. It's a vicious circle actually. But then, it seems to me, the writer, that lately everything about this John is just another vicious circle, another bad joke, like when you make your dog chase his own tail for twenty minutes until he falls asleep.

                Except John never falls asleep. He just falls deeper inside his mind, and sooner or later I'm afraid he won't be able to pull himself back from it. And that shall be the end for him, but not the ending he craves for, so for now he just does his best to throw out a lifeboat every once in a while. But let's get to the point, I wonder if there is any left, or if there ever was from the beginning. One thing we have established by now, one thing that defines him, is his idealism. An idealism that sometimes even goes as far as to rhyme with stupidity. And that's what's making him die. He sees the best in the small things and the worst in all the things, and that might just make him the saddest man on the planet. And if it doesn't, then the fact that he doesn't care about them, not even in the slightest, surely does.

                So, whatever, John is a dreamer, and he doesn't care. Why should he, in the end?  Except that he should. He apparently is a dreamer without his dream, and that's just bad. He lost his one big thing, his one true thing, his last hope of escape. He lost the will to die. Or better said, the craving. Ha still wants it, with all his heart even, but it seems as if his heart is no more. He feels like he can't keep going on this way, hoping for the one, the one big and true love, that will finally put him to peace and then sweep him out of his grave with new and renewed forces.

                Unfortunately, it seems that lately not even hope can keep John going. So he just takes things as they are, and prays in secret. Sometimes, he wishes it would be different, he wishes that all of his demons would somehow become real and take him down, or bring him up. He says he doesn't care, and he is mostly right, but he says it so often that it sometimes become a lie, only because it's already a reflex. He wishes that, for example, he could 'make out' with a girl, just any girl. But that's impossible and he resents the expression with all his being. Like the little fucking dreamer he is, John is unable to go for a girl without any feelings, and that's tearing him up. And it's bringing him peace, at the same time. For a second, a minute, a fraction, John Doe dies a little every time he sees a girl. He falls in love with every instance, with every moment, with every kiss. He falls for a glimpse, for a taste, a touch, even the trace of perfume, a perfume that would normally go unnoticed. Like I said before, it's the little things.     But it's only for a second, the time it takes the air to get in the lungs, the eyes to blink with a vague impression of a nervous twitch, an instant in which two lips fall apart, two glances cross each other, two awkward smiles meet in perfect courtesy. And a love story is written in that second, and trapped forever like on a piece of paper, and then the world goes back to its pace, and the second is lost between countless other excruciating seconds, and then the paper burns down, and John Doe comes back to life. And then for hundreds of thousands of seconds, he goes back to surviving, he throws out another lifeboat, and desperately tries to remember what it was like to be dead. What it was like to be free.

John the undying

                The poor sucker just won't die already. It kind of gets tiring to wait and wait and wait for the day when John Doe can finally go down, so that a new John can rise. But he's just too stubborn. And it's not like he doesn't want to die. He does, he really does with all his heart. But like any other suicidal idiot, every time he gets so close to death he thinks he finally made it, something pulls him back up, a sense of neediness, a sense of loathing for his future resurrection. Frankly,  he feels like he doesn't deserve to die, not yet. He'd much rather suffer for his sins inside his sick mind that almost turned into living hell.

                It all sounds stupid when you think about it. But it's the sad truth. And all because he's a stupid idealist. That's why he can't die. Because his death may never be perfect. And he wants it to be. Nothing less than the perfect death can do. The setting must be right, but it must happen in the wrong place, the weapon must be silent, but he must go out with a bang, everything is a contradiction in his scenario. And he won't accept anything else. And that's why he can't leave this world anytime soon, not even for a little while, as he wants.

                But wait, there's more. This absence of death has taken its toll on John's life. He can't even tell what's wrong anymore. He doesn't know if he's the screw-up, or if the world is just too wrong. Maybe there's a little bit of both. Maybe he's just a madman in a mad world. But up until now, he kept lying to himself, telling himself that it's not that bad, that he's not that bad. And when that stopped working, he started fooling himself with the hope that he will die already, and then he'll come again, and everything will change. but he knew from the beginning that it was all a lie. Nothing ever changes, remember?

                So where can he go? The world is wrong, his mind is wrong, his heart is stupid, what is there left to do? How can he get himself to stop falling into every bear trap he can find, hoping that it's the right one, the killer one? It's simple, he can't. He's back to square one. Back to the sea, back to the drifting stage, back to surviving. But there's still one thing he can do. Because he was stupid enough to set the house on fire, he wanted to go out in flames. But now he doesn't want it anymore. Now he wants back, so he must find a way. He must put out the fire, before it spreads and turns into a firestorm and burns down everything. But how can you put out a fire, without any water? Maybe if he burns himself, maybe this will work, because running away sure as hell ain't an option anymore. He was too damn stupid, and he burned down all his bridges. So now what? 

John with a chance

                Do you believe in second chances? Well, John doesn't. He only believes in second screw-ups. Every new opportunity is for him just another time bomb waiting for the right moment to blow up in his face. And the trigger? It's him, of course. It's always him. Nobody is able to fuck John's life with more sheer talent than John Doe. He's a master of destruction, everything he touches turns to dust, and for some reason he takes an awful amount of pleasure out of touching his own life.

                He's got to take some solace tough. It's a mad world out there. He's not the only screw-up. Everybody has baggage, and some even manage to carry it with them without stress. John isn't quite like that. He's the bad kind of baggage. The sad, miserable, self-loathing and not caring type. He got used to it, and he just keeps on surviving, day after day. And it's a pain. It's just a goddamn pain. He's sick and tired of surviving, of carrying on.

                John Doe craves death. Just like people crave happiness, or health, he craves to die. Why? Because it's a mad world. And he's the wrong kind of fucked-up. Usually, when people get screwed, they go into despair, pain, or even suicide to get over it. Nut not John, he's not like that. He's an extraordinary screw-up. He doesn't feel sadness, or despair, or depression. He feels nothing. And it's a pain. He just wants to die so he can live again.

                You know how people say to get the best out of life and enjoy the little things? Fucking hypocrites. And they also tell you not to let the small things bother you. Fucking hypocrites with double standards. John is different tough, he's not an hypocrite in this matter. He takes nothing out of nothing. For him there are no small thing, and no big things either. There is just the life we have to live, the life that's a bitch, the life that is way too stubborn to end itself. But, that's just it. John just has to go on. Another day another pray, another attempt at even the slightest of feelings, another failed attempt, of course.

                Still, we should talk about chances. Because John might just be facing this, a chance. The past is back to haunt him again. Not the old past, that one never really left. The much more recent past. A missed chance, a lost opportunity. He might even get lucky enough and die. Just so he can live again. Because for John Doe, that expression saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is just a load of crap. For him, it's not even what kills him. He just never gets stronger, he just discovers more and more sides of him, he's in a constant pursuit, trying to evade his mind and explore the real world.

                Too hard tough. How can you ever ask someone to deliberately leave their comfort zone, just to go out into this mad world? John likes his twisted reality, it's his only constant in a world of constant change. People never change, but the world does, way too often, and it forces John to hide even deeper inside his mind. But now he has a new chance to break out. Who knows? Maybe this is the death he's been craving for. Maybe he will wake up and be able to feel again. But can he take the leap? Can he evade? It's hard to say. He might just be unconfortably numb enough to go for it. What's the worst that could happen? He can always come back to his lack of feeling, so he's got nothing to lose. Here comes nothing, another chance to screw things up. Maybe this time he'll break himself right.

                Here's to the proper way of screwing up. 

John the screw-up

                It's a mad world out there. Even worse, it's a fucked up world out there. And John Doe is one small, insignificant piece of broken puzzle in this godly forgotten world. Poor sucker. And he just recently figured this out, if only he had known. Until now, he thought that he was the one who needed fixing, that he was the one that was broken, but truth is, the world is broken, and now he has come to realize this. Everything changes, but no one does. John is amongst the wrong people in the wrong place in this reality.

                Everybody has baggage. One way or another, everyone gets hurt, and everybody gets dumb, and we all fuck up. That's just the way life goes, it's nothing personal. John thought that the world was out to get him, when it was just happening to him like it's happening to everybody else. Reality is a dark, dark place, that's why John keeps finding his way back to his own mind, to his own reality, the one trapped inside his brain. It's a much comfier, more familiar place in there, and that's why every struggle to escape into the real world seems to end in complete and utter failure for him.

                But he's not mad. He used to be frustrated, thinking that nothing really good would ever happen to him. And he was right. At the same time though, he was very wrong. It's true that a miracle will never happen to him, no matter how hard he prays for it, but not because he's fucked up. That has little to nothing to do with it. No, the reason is much simpler and completely objective. The truth is, nothing really good ever happens to anyone, so why should John Doe be an exception?

                Actually, he should be an exception, shouldn't he? After all, it's called "The book of the extraordinary John Doe", so he should be at least a tiny bit of special. But he's not. The title is a lie. It's a big fat lie. Everything is a lie. Nothing's real anymore. It has all been just a dream. Just a bad dream, an illusion, conjured by the mind. The things he did, the things he said, who he is, if he is, it's all just dusty dreaming, and it's all over now. She wasn't real either, it wasn't real, it never happened, pure fiction, you're in fact normal, you're back to square one. In a while you'll forget you even dreamt this.

                Oh how he wishes he could say this. You can't imagine how many times John has rehearsed this scenario in his head, hoping that this time it would be different, this time it would be real. And he would actually wake up and start his life all over again. All the deaths, all the pain, all the rejection, all the loss, all of them just pure fiction that his mind had nothing better to do than to bring up in a night's rest. How perfect would it be? But it's not. And John isn't an exception. He wasn't asleep during his existence, and he sure isn't asleep now. He's just numb. And stupid. And it's all real. It's not a bad dream. Reality is a bad dream. And someone forgot to set the alarm.

                Sometimes, actually all the time, John wonders how life would have been if he wasn't such a screw-up. If he was just another person, living just another boring life, deluding himself with the plastic-flower smell of prefabricated happiness. And it doesn't seem so bad when he thinks about it. But it is. On the long run, the realization of nothingness is far more useful than the illusion of happiness. Because if you know you've got a problem, you also know that you need to fix it. Or at least try to. And that's what he has his mind set on, fixing it. Not becoming happy, just fixing it, whatever 'it' is. On the short term though, there's only one thing that's completely true. John Doe is without doubt a screw-up. An extraordinary screw-up. And that's fine by him.

John the knight

                Ok, it's becoming obsessive right now. John Doe really needs a breakthrough. He needs it badly. Too many things went wrong for him, there's got to be even a tiny grain of justice in this world, or karma, or whatever. It would be nice if, for once at least, things were to work out for him. He's definitely ready for it, in fact, he's been expecting this since God only knows when, so you might even say he was born ready. And he's also willing to go the extra mile, to actually try not to screw things up this time. He can't promise anything yet, but I've got a good feeling about this. It's crazy enough that it might just work.

                It's true, he still has some baggage on him from the past. But the ghosts are starting to fade away, and everything he does somehow seems more and more real, that can't be a bad thing. It's not like he can just let go of the past and become a whole new self. He was never able to master that. No matter how many times he has been reborn, there is always a small piece of his past that gets impregnated on his new soul, and it stains it forever. You could say that by now his heart has become a rainbow of loathing and past disappointments. But there's room for more, and even if he hopes it won't' be necessary, John is always ready to invent a new color, something not to bright, so it doesn't distract the attention from the old spots.

                A shade of brown hair, a trace of green eyes, maybe even the dark red of the most poisonous lips, those are the colors of John's heart. And beneath the painted coating lies the darkness of his wicked soul.  It's better even, just to have it painted like that, it would have been a shame if it were all black and gloomy. Where there is color there is hope, and that's what keeps him going. And there's a new paintbrush on his easel, and who knows, maybe this will be the one that paints him bright red and throws him to the world to die. Maybe this time there will be no space unpainted, and there will be no more need for painting. One can just hope.

                How great is it that he is able to do this. That we are all able to do this. To move on to the next paintbrush, hoping that this time things will be different, knowing they probably won't. How terrible it would be if we fell in love only once in a lifetime? Unbearable at the least. Don't get me wrong, it's beautiful when you finally find "the one" that's meant to be there forever. But you never know when will that be, and you have plenty of time to try and figure it out, but it most certainly won't work. So all you can do is take the love as it comes and hope you don't find the true one too soon or too late. You love every single one as if it were the one, and if it isn't, you never regret it, because it would have been much worse if it were and you would have ignored it.

                And that's what John Doe does, in every single moment of his existence. He is an idealist, he lives with the illusion of the perfect love stuck in his mind. And that's why he madly falls for any girl that he meets on a bus, and he lives a whole love story with her in just under a minute, right before he has to get off the ride, too late for an introduction. And he grieves, and he hates himself for a while, but then he sees another on the street, and it's back to square one. And when he finally finds the guts to go for one, he throws himself head first like the biggest fool there is in this universe. And he usually ends up bashing his head on the ground. An then it's back to self loathing. But he doesn't regret a thing, because he always goes down swinging, and honestly, that's the only thing that matters. John Doe needs to fight for the ideal love, even though his cause is not only lost, but it never really existed. At least he has one, a cause, that is.

John's incapability

                Next comes nothing. John Doe is still down, with not much hope of getting up. Stuck on the surface, barely floating, praying for a miracle. A miracle that will probably never come. He's missed his chance, he blew it away like he always does. A chance came, another after, but as always, he dismissed them without hesitation. He didn't even realize he did it. He never does. His intentions are always good, but somehow he shoots himself in the foot with any given opportunity. If only he would have the courage of being so kind as to aim for the heart for a chance. But he's too much of coward for that.

                John has many, let's call them attributes because they not really are flaws, but you definitely can't call them qualities either. One of them, one of the biggest ones is, of course, hypocrisy. It's ironically one of the things he despises most in this world. But he can't help it, he is by his nature a hypocrite. Not by choice, of course, but it's not something he tries to change either. Truth be told, he's not changing anything. That's partly because he doesn't believe in changes, not when it comes to people. People never change, they just unravel new sides of their character as they move along trough life.

                That aside, let's get back to the hypocrite . John Doe. that is. You see, John had to choose to go on. life forced him into it. The only problem is, he's got no idea how to do it. He hits his head to a wall whenever he tries to get up. And that wall is his hypocrisy. He says he wants to meet people, go places, but when a chance presents itself, he does his best to alienate it as soon and as efficient as possible. He walks away from new people, he takes the long but familiar way home. He does his utmost best not to wander off too far from his comfort zone, and that's the thing that's ruining him the most. The same old friends, the same old places, the same old life. The past lives in his present so vividly that he sometimes thinks he's remembering, when he's actually living in the moment. The boundaries between the present and the past are faded. But there's no "déjà vu" in it. It couldn't be. Because he has burned all the bridges, broke all connections with his past. And when he realizes that, it's when he breaks the spell and gets back in the moment.

                The sad part is, when he gets back in the moment, he realizes that the moment is nothing, the moment is empty. When the dream is gone, when the past becomes past once again, that's when John tries to evade, to get on with it. And then he hits another wall. This time it's his power of will. The lack of it, to be more specific. He's a coward. He's so terrified at the thought of something working out for him that he tries very hard to sabotage any attempt of escape from the comfort zone. His zone. He tries to push himself, but he unconsciously screws up every time. He lies to himself on a daily basis, telling himself that from now on things will be different, but in reality, he does nothing to even try and make them better. He hates the place he's at, but deep down he doesn't want to leave. And that's why he has no will. The only things he seems able to hold on to are bad habits. He needs help, and he sure as hell can't help himself. So, if you see John on the street, remember to help him, for what is worth. And if you don't, and you'll probably never will, just try and pray for him, to whatever entity you might think our world is governed by. Feel sorry for John Doe, because he can never feel sorry for himself.

John's turning point

                That's it. No more, John Doe can't take no more. There's just so much you can accept until you break. Nobody's fireproof, and John is far from it. He's hit rock bottom. He's as low as a man can get. He thought he could handle it just like he did before, he forced himself to fight his desires, but he failed oh so miserably and lost. He suffered a horrible defeat from life, and now he's got two things to choose from. He can  give it all up and say his goodbyes to this cruel world, then go back into the darkness that gave him life, fade back into the embracing oblivion of inexistence.

                But he's not ready for that, he can't give up his existence just yet. There are many things that he's done wrong, tons of mistakes and a whole lot of resent in his life. He's not ready to make amends with this world. At this point, he just hates himself too much to do it. He needs to prove to himself that he can do better, that he can make better mistakes, that he is capable of regrets. He still hasn't made enough trouble to himself to wake the regrets inside his heart. So he can't go, not yet.

                So what's the boy supposed to do now? What can you do when you can't even give up? Well, thank God I said there were two choices. Since the first is out of the question, let's see what's with the second one. The only one actually, because the first was never an option. This one, well this one's the real deal, not the thing he wants, but the thing he needs right now. It's funny how life just puts it on the table for you, and all it took was one tiny mistake, one tiny stupid thing to snap him out of his drifting and remind him that he's in the middle of the ocean, and he'll soon be drowning.

                What do you do when you hit the ground hard? What do you do when there's no place lower you can sink into? Until not long ago, John did nothing. He tried to merely survive from one day to another, tried to go along with the undercurrents. And it worked, for a while. But now he's stuck on the ground, and he simply can't stay down a minute longer, even though he would like nothing better. It somehow sucks, knowing you can never go back to that bottom, or at least hoping you never will. Life moves on though, and so must John Doe. Where else could he go from the bottom of the lowest? Well, there isn't much of a choice. He has to get up. He has to try and fight for it, whatever it may be.

                It took a small thing to get here, a small, insignificant detail, a missed opportunity, or better yet said a denied opportunity. John so easily proved to himself that he's got every good reason to resent himself. He's a coward, a hypocrite, he's stupid, vain and what not. He's pretty much everything he hates in this life, but he's got one tiny little hope to cling on. He's a dreamer. And that's enough to make him move forward. He'll probably never change, no one ever does for that matter, but he doesn't want to. He may continue to be a total fool and a resentful human being, but that means he will also continue to be a dreamer, an idealist. He will always fight for what's right, even if he won't do it in the end. As long as there's even the tini0st bit of conscience left in his soul, he'll go on.

                It's hard to say what going on means, it's not something you can easily express in words. It's not like he didn't move on until now. He moved on. But he merely survived, he didn't live, he hasn't lived in a long time. That ends now, or at least it should. No more drowning in his own sorrow, no more lost chances, no more missing the past. It's all just water under a bridge now, and life goes on. And John goes on. And he hasn't got a clue what to do next. John Doe will merely try to make bigger and better mistakes tomorrow, one day at a time. So, what's next?

All cameras on John

John Doe is stuck. He needs a new life, he needs to get out, to reboot himself. His mind is blocked in a sad part of his past ant it’s repeating it like an old VCR that’s stuck on replay. Lately, his existence is down to just surviving the world around him, not even aware of what’s going on outside his brain. For all he knows a meteor might have even landed on earth and destroyed half it’s surface, and he couldn’t care less. He needs to break out.

The sad part is that, well, he can’t. He tries, oh how he tries, but the past keeps coming back to him, hitting him in the face and knocking him unconscious, back to the memories that hurt him so bad. Every minute, every day the same scenes compulsively repeated inside his head, as if his brain is hoping that sooner or later the outcome will change. But it doesn’t. No mater how hard he tries, everything stays the same, he relives the same pain, he does things just as wrong. It’s like he’s watching a bad movie, screaming at the actor not to do this or not to say that, but the actor knows his part, and the silent screams that break his skull are muted, because only the director could ask for another take, and the director is long gone.

The movie was played, the roles were fulfilled, and John remains the only one that doesn’t seem to be able to move on to new role. Everyone left the theatre, and the film gets played back endlessly for the audience of one from a broken projector. And maybe, just maybe, if he watches it long enough, John will eventually forget who the main characters are, and he wont feel the pain in his eyes that appears every time the slides are focused in his eyelids, the pain that almost makes his eyelids moisture. Maybe he’ll even become amused by the movie, realize that it’s been a bad comedy all along, and he’ll give it a bad mark on a rating chart and move along to start a new role, with a whole new cast.

He wishes he could find the director and ask him to change the setting, to change the lines, the lights, the costumes, hoping that it will change the plot also. He wishes to talk to the script writer, to ask him what was he thinking when he wrote such a poor excuse for a dark comedy. But most of all, he wishes to go back and talk with the actor, the one that chose to play the part, knowing that the story was bad, knowing that there will be only one viewer able to appreciate it for what it’s worth. It’s too late now, the scenes were filmed, edited and released, and the viewer saw it way to many times.

It’s not that hard to figure it all out. You should have got the point by now. Yes, John Doe is the actor, and yes, John Doe is the character, and yes, the one and only, John Doe is the faithful viewer that comes back to the theatre every time the show is projected, and forgets to leave when the curtain is drawn. And he needs a new manager, because if he doesn’t find another movie to play in soon, his career will be over and all will have been for nothing. It takes a flop to know what a flop is, but it also takes a flop to truly appreciate a success. It’s time for John to get his time to shine, his fifteen minutes of fame, and the firs step is to burn down the theatre, along with the dusted rolls of film that the projectionist forgot in the machine a long time ago. And scene. 

John's withdrawal

            John Doe is an addict. He has so many little habits, some worse than the others, he can’t even think of going a day without. It’s not such a big deal if you think about it. We all have a thing or another that we assume we could never get along without, or simply don’t bother to. They become part of our every day life and it’s almost impossible to give up on the small things that create roots deep inside our daily routine.

            But it’s a bit different with John. He’s figured out a whole new meaning for addiction. He tends to do that quite often, creating personal interpretations to well known concepts. It’s just another way of enriching his personal reality, the one in which no one and nothing can interfere. For him an addiction is not a bad thing. It’s not like he couldn’t survive without this or that. But that’s the point. He could only survive. These addictions become a part of his life, a part of who he is, and he doesn’t want to give up on who he is. He wants to live, even if only inside his self-made reality and living means letting addictions take their course.

            He doesn’t really need them, he could go on without them. But he wants them. He craves them with all his heart. So he keeps them close to him and embraces them as part of his life. He barely gets by anyway, so why make his existence even more painful by trying to let go of the baggage that he intentionally packed and go on his own? There’s just no point in doing so. He got used to his habits and learned to love them, take them with him trough good and trough bad. Isn’t this what we all do, at one point or another?

            The sad part tough, is when he is forced to let go of one of them. When the real world just can’t help but tear away another small bit of John Doe and toss it away. From time to time, another piece of him has to go into oblivion, and that’s what slowly kills him. He doesn’t want to let it go, he never does, but sometimes he just doesn’t have a choice. He learns to get by without that piece, something from inside him wakes and fills the void that’s left, put it fills it with nothing. It’s just another shadow casted upon his soul, and the true him becomes smaller and smaller with every piece that falls off. He rarely finds something to replace the void, another addiction, but it’s never the same. How could it be? That lost him will never come back, and this alone is enough to make him bitter.

It’s like when you break a bone. Time heals it, but you can never quite get it back to the shape it used to be, no matter how hard you try. Not even with the same addiction. The worst part is, John most often gets addicted to the things he can’t hold on to. Like with Jane Doe. Even if je would try to get her back, it would most certainly never be the same as it was back then. He will probably never find another love to match the one he had for Jane. That’s why he never really got over it. The love is lost, but the addiction lingers, hurting him day by day. And she’s not the only thing he’s lost throughout time. So John Doe lives his life in a constant state of loathing and bitterness. He is condemned to go day by day in withdrawal.