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.