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.