John's gun game

                Aaand we're  back. I mean we never left. We were just quiet, lurking in the shadows, kept our breaths until an opportunity presented itself. Wait a second... Did I say we? Who the hell is we? Why are we talking in plural here?

                I meant John. Clearly. Obviously. Silly me, talking about anyone else. There is no anyone else. Just John. Forever and ever, like in the fairytales. Or was that in the nightmares? I don't even know anymore.

                Anyhow, let's get back to what's important. John. He is his own story after all. He's even in the titles. Even though important is quite a big attribute to give to John. He's only important for himself, only in his head, only in this story which is his. By him, with him and about him. Maybe not really by him, but who cares? It's not like it's relevant.

                As we left him, John was, I think, on the verge of a glorious death. A beautiful death. A death that would set him free. He was almost on his higher ground, almost on his peek, right when he was at his lowest point. But it's been a long time from then, hasn't it. You'd think he'd made it, you'd think that's why he's been gone for so long. And you'd most certainly be... Wrong. Yup, still here, still riding strong. Still alive. And what a beautiful time to be alive. Well not for him, but in general.

                Oh no, not for him indeed. He waited and waited and waited. And nothing. Nothing ever happens. He longed for it for so long, that it all went to shit. And he needed another to realize. Another false promise. Another beautiful lie that kicked him in the head and caused some sort of epiphany. A commotion actually.  And it came, not as expected, but it came. A false friend, a false lover, a testimony of truth nonetheless. It all came clear then.

                John shall never die again. He's stuck,  or better yet condemned to live. He will never find what he's looking for. That beautiful death, that liberating feeling of letting go just to get caught by life at the very last second. That rebirth. It's nothing but a myth. Condemned to live forever and forever condemned to live. Like in some sort of limbo, like in a persistent state of life. It's funny if you think about it, to realize that there's nothing more to life than living.

                Now let's take a moment and reflect about this so called realization. This new element in the life of John the undying. She, because obviously it's a she, came like a storm and left even faster, wreaking havoc all around her. At first glance, just another night she was, just another fun time. Not even worthy of remembering. And that's exactly what made her special. What sparked the flame of illumination in Johns head, if you want. That she was just another one of the, not many, but few.

                That's John's curse, that's his sin. He'll never find death because death doesn't exist in his world anymore. Only numbing pain. A perpetual game of Russian roulette. With no bullets in the chamber. But he doesn't know that. He keeps pulling the damn trigger, hoping for that bullet to come out of the barrel and shatter his brains all across the universe. But the bullet never comes. No boom breaking the silence.

Only click... click... click... 

Confusing John

who the fuck am I
and who the hell are you?
why are we here together
and what are we supposed to do?

why am I running?
why are you standing still?
do we even know eachother?
or do we only do it for the thrill?

I guess we'll never know
I guess we'll never meet
we're only gonna live forever
with the earth beneath our feet....

John's neverending chase

You try to run

and you try to hide

but they always find you,

they always catch up.

You try to hide

and you try to run

'cause you want to deceive them,

chase them away.

And you try to drown them

in poison and smoke

but they know how to swim,

they feed from the bane.

And wherever you go

and whatever you do

they'll always be with you,

the demons

that live in your head.

John's untalented struggle

Blank spaces

The feeling you get

When it's 3 in the morning

and you're alone in your head

and you eagerly want to write

but you have nothing to say to the paper

and the thoughts crawl beside you

and you want nothing more than to think

of her

and miss her

but then you realize that there is no her

anymore

and maybe there never even was...

John's repentance

Choosing a penance

The light of day
burns
and the darkness of night
scares
and there is nothing one can do
to escape them both.

You must choose your penance
but choose wisely because
sometimes
the pain is bigger than the dismay
and it's better to feed
your horror
rather than damage
yourself

Another time John thought he was a poet

Unfinished

Unfinished poems

Filled with giant feelings

In words too small

Which don't describe

By half the whole

Weave of emotions

From the innocent soul

Of a child too small.

Kidnapped from his dragon filled world

And thrown to waste

In a dark reality

Paved with shards

Of blood and altered life.

Forever more twisted

And always left unfinished.

Likewise the words, the dreams

And the futile desires...

John's sunrise conviction

                She was the kind of girl that leaves a man with only one of two choices. You either fall madly in love with her or you hate her for everything that she is. John chose the third. He knew where it would all end up and he finished it before it even started. After all, no harm no foul is always the safest way of dealing with these kind of things.

                To be honest, she offered him the thing he craves the most in this whole damn world. A chance to die. To die and revive himself, become something new, something else. And that's all he wishes, to become something else, because now he is nothing and it hurts like hell. But he politely refused it. He never even knew that he would be capable of refusing such an opportunity. And yet he did it. And he sure doesn't regret it. He resents it a bit, but not the slightest trace of regret. Now, we could go on and on all over again about John's lack of faith in regret, but we won't because we already did it and it's irrelevant in this matter. You must still admit though that this whole refuse doesn't make sense. John never does. Nothing ever does.

                We're drifting from the subject though aren't we? Like always the talk about John becomes about bullshit. But bullshit is always the subject in matter when it comes to John Doe. He's all about meaningless talks and useless concepts with his crappy point of view about life and love and everything in the universe and beyond. And that's a bit harsh but we can afford to talk shit about John because he never talks shit about anyone. That's just not him.

                But the girl. Where does that leave us with the girl? He lived and died a thousand times and did it all over again in his head with her or without her. He weighed all the possible scenarios and outcomes of his death in that moment and ended up numbly refusing the sentence. And so she just becomes yet another excuse, another bullet to dodge. She remains forever pure to the world and a cold hearted murderer only to John and his twisted imagination.

                The killer who never bothered to pull the actual trigger...

John's brainfreeze

The beautiful bliss

Of reaching inner peace

Is upon me because

I'm longing to fly

Into the darkness of your eye

And find what it is

That you do so to please

Yourself as for me

There's nothing more to see

For I have been in your eyes

And I have seen there that lies

Can never set you free

From a mind that's at sea

In a struggle with the world

That doesn't lead to the pot of gold

At the end of a rainbow of mud

And so in my eyes

There's hopes of blue skies

And of suns warm as hell

But to someone I must tell

That in spite of my bliss

You should know that I always

Carry an umbrella. 

John's selfish romance

                Romance, the best joke ever told in this world. John knows a thing or two about romance. He is, after all an idealist, and what can be more utopist than romance. It's basically something that only lives in one's head, and because our John is nothing more than a shadow in a head, romance lives in him. He feeds from it, the same way he feeds from the pain. Because pain is nurturing for a romantic, it's the only possible outcome of love, and so it must keep flowing so that love can keep existing.

                Actually, pain is the way that John's idealism materializes. He's a ghost of love, and pain is what happens when he tries to escape in reality. Because love can't fully conjure in the real world, it turns into pain instead so that the ghost remains a ghost, so that it doesn't become real. After all, who would want the ghosts to become reality. Just imagine how fucked up this world would be if out of nowhere all of our ghosts would start to take shape and walk with us, follow us like minions everywhere we go. Not to say that the world isn't fucked up anyway, but that's another story. Think about it. Think about walking down the street and seeing every John Doe, everyone with a story. " I'm John's lack of self--esteem, pleased to meet you, would you like to  walk all over me?". "I'm John's hopeless romance, would you like to break me up into pieces and feed me to the dogs of hate?".

                So yeah, it's better that John remains a ghost, that all the Johns and Janes are ghosts. They follow us everywhere, but no one else can see them, no one to bother them, no one to feed them or crush them. John is free to live his pitiful inexistence in peace. And so is Jane. And she always was, just like he's always been. Both free ghosts trapped in two heads, both the same and at the same so different. Both wanting to break loose, still both fighting their way back inside after every little breath of air they get accompanied by a merciful slap on the face by the stone cold reality that they so desperately trying to reach.

                Oh, Jane Doe. The one. The first one. The only true romance in John's existence. The one that brought him to life and then gently killed him as an act of kindness. So much to know about her and yet so little to say. And even less ever said. A love unknown by her, a selfish love, John's first love. She never knew, and she never will, because John could never be as brave as to confront his maker in the first place. And yet he misses her. He misses himself too. The old John Doe, the primordial one, he wishes he could go back to that existence, when he never even dreamt of the real world. Everything was imagination, and it was the best love story of all.

                Just take a moment to consider. What better than to have not one, but a thousand outcomes to a billion scenarios and to be able to live them over and over again, without ever knowing how any of them would end in the real world. Just the purity of a sick imagination. The real world spoils the romance, and Jane Doe remains until this day the only true, idealistic, utopist and inexistent love of him. It may have been the most selfish romance of all, but John Doe deeply misses it. He just wishes he could go back. He just wants to be selfish at least once more in his life.

Johns utter happiness

                Yeah, happiness, what a cool concept right? Everybody wants it and everybody claims he's happy. Some even say that others make them happy. Big fucking liars. In this idiotic world the only one that fights for your happiness is you, only you and no one else but you. You must stand your ground and take a swing back at life every time it tries to knock you down, because in the end nobody else can do it for you.

                And that brings us to our stupid little John. Probably the only idiot out there that still puts his twisted ideals above his happiness. The only one fucked up enough to care more for others than for himself, to play with his own feelings just so he doesn't hurt the feelings of others. For a person that doesn't give a fuck about other people's opinion, he sure does put a lot of effort into trying to please everybody and be as politically correct as humanly possible.

                How noble, one may think, what an amazing sacrifice for the sake of others. Wrong! So Goddamn wrong. By doing this John is, in fact, the most selfish person anyone could ever meet in a lifetime. He pleases everybody to keep his options open, he avoids other people's pain so he can keep it all to himself, he feeds from other's right to misery. Deep inside his twisted mind, he knows that no one is really happy, he knows that this mad world fucks us all at one point or another. But he tries his best to keep others happy, or at least to see others happy. This way, his misery is what defines him, it's his own little thing, the only thing that reality can't screw up even more. It's his own special thing. By feeling a lonesome sufferer, John feels special. So fucking special.

                But he's not. The extraordinary John Doe is just another loser in a twisted world, an idiot with a bad case of hypocrisy and a load of self-loath in his brain. Just another closed-up thought in another twisted mind. He could've died a thousand times till now, and that's the only thing that could ever make him special. The only extraordinary thing about him. John Doe won't fucking die. He just won't let go, he keeps himself alive, feeding from other people's happiness and nurturing himself with sadness.  He hides from his happiness like a vampire hides from the sunlight, he just won't quit. All he would have to do would be to let himself catch fire and burn in an explosion of joy. But no. John Doe is a stubborn little fuck, and as said before, it seems that he's bound to survive in this world forever more.

John the dreamer

                Sleep is the best. John loves sleep, from the bottom of his soul. It's probably the best way to escape this fucked up world, and if there were ever a way to sleep through all this mess, John would be the first to try it. When he sleeps, he escapes the world, he escapes his world, and at the same time he escapes his mind. Because when his mind becomes darker than the night, there is no place too far from it where he'd rather be. And sleep, the simplest thing in the world, offers the easiest solution. What better escape from everything than a good old complete shutdown of the brain, what better place to hide from a shitstorm than Johns subconscious.

                And the best part, the most beautiful part about sleeping are, of course, dreams. John is a dreamer, an idealist, and the only place where something could go right for him is of course in his sleep. With every dream comes another world and all he has to do when things go bad is to wake up. Just like that, everything goes away and he's free to sleep himself back to another reality, a better reality. Nothing is real in his dreams, so nothing can hurt John, no scars nor bruises when he wakes up, no problems to solve, no situations to be dealt with. Just complete and utter freedom of thought and imagination.

                But wait, just wait. Because the real world, as usual, has to step in and screw everything out. Because that's what it does, this twisted reality in which the entire planet cohabitates. It screws with Johns plans, it breaks his world, breaches the walls of his dreams and pulls him out to face the reality of how fucked up he really is. Because everything that goes right in his dreams, goes wrong in his reality, and even worse in the real world. And the worst part, of course, is that you can't wake up from reality.

                The only thing you can do, the only thing John can do is go back to sleep. Escape one nap at a time, one small universe after another, shattered one by one by the sound of an alarm clock louder than a bomb and built again the next night, until there will be no more clock, and no more time, and Johns sleep will be eternal. But we all know that this won't happen too soon, because this little fucker, John by his name, is meant to walk this earth forever and drown forever in his mind of which we've talked over and over till now.

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?