First day

The first day at work – a lot of information given, therefore a lot to learn and to digest, but I am making the effort. I will tell you exactly why in a bit.
The people are very nice, helpful and always in a good mood. As usual, I am nervous, surrounded by a sense of intimidation on the first few days. I don’t quite know yet how each of them ticks, how each one works and what’s required and expected from me. But a lot of you may know I am a team player; I just need time to make myself fit in. The work is sincere and you are being fully trained. There is a hell of a lot of detail that needs attention. But I’m sure it’s a rhythm/routine that I can get straight into after maybe two or three weeks. How I hate the beginning of things, I know that I need to get through this carefully. I am surrounded by left brainers with limited rooms for a right brainer, which is one reason why I feel slightly left out. So I’ll have to poke my left side a bit to ask for a little help. This is my way to boost my self-reliance. The work consists of a lot of abbreviations, general knowledge (which I need to expand a lot more) and patience. I know what my friends think while reading this. Just keep your mouth shut, please.
I’m making my own decisions here, I know what’s good for me. Though, I am still careful; after what I’ve been through in the last 3 weeks (you know) I have to. I’m keeping my composure, despite exhaustion and nausea. I have to make sure to learn all the necessary information in order to fit in and I will. Things need to begin to settle, come into place and lift me up.
Hard work.
This is why I’m here.
In spite of the hard work, I overheard something when I was in the lift, coming back from my lunch break. The lift was packed and I could see one of my supervisors entering the lift with some other girls. I wanted to shout “hi”, but she didn’t see me, so I didn’t bother. One of the girls said:
“So you found someone for Germany?”
The supervisor then said “Yeah, she was born in Germany…”
I was about to shout that I was right there.
But she continued: “But she isn’t good enough…”
That was that. I was supposed to get off with them on the 6th floor, but I waited until I arrived at the 7th floor, hiding my face behind all my starter’s pack notes.
A lot of questions arose in my mind. I knew that it had been difficult for them to find a suitable applicant – so what exactly made me pass the two interviews that I attended the other week? I proved that I can do percentage calculation, I knew where the Brandenburger Gate is and I introduced some common sense on a business related level (I was quite fascinated about myself actually). So basically, what makes me not good enough? Maybe I’m not good enough because I answered that tricky question about the multiplying anemones wrong. It had required a greater depth of focus and thinking.
Anyway, I didn’t face the supervisor, because I know better. I prejudge people myself. All I can say is that she surely isn’t writing a novel. And she would never spend 8-10 hours writing a story.
However, it was the first time of me travelling through this horrible town during peak time in the morning. I nearly fainted on the tube, because it was so packed and stuffy. You have to plan to leave the house at least 90min before your work starts, in order not to panic about getting there late.
I keep telling everyone how much I hate this town. But you can imagine how hard-working New Yorker heart surgeons are.

The value you produce

It’s about time to consider giving up. It’s the second time within four days that people call me naïve. I hate this word, it sounds childish and I refer it to being gullible. I’m too sceptic to be gullible, too cynical to believe that people are genuinely good. You think I believe what certain employers say to me, but I don’t. What I do is I immediately think about my dreams and goals and I believe I can reach them. So if an employer says that I can earn 100k in a year, I only have in mind the debt that I can pay back to my parents – that’s all. It’s not simply the money, but also the challenge involved. I can never learn enough.
At least now I know that London is full of hungry wolves – you have to be ruthless if you want to survive and I noticed that I’ve not been ruthless enough. I’ve been hiding in my room, writing. I enjoyed it, it has been the best year of writing and I just can’t accept the fact that it’s over. I don’t want to take the next step into something that I don’t want to be involved in.
But there is no other way.
I chose to live in a town where it is impossible to save money; where people are unavoidable and looking to take you for granted.

I thought I found a one bed flat to myself for a fair price, but it turned out to be a double room in a house. I took it because there was only little time left.
I have a nice landlady who taught me about survival, but I don’t really have my space; I’m renting a room after all, which includes shower and a kitchenette, even a TV that I don’t use. To use the toilet, which is next to the dining room, I have to run downstairs and my landlord’s usually in the dining room every late afternoon till late, working. So whenever I go downstairs, she’d stop me for a chat. It’s ok every now and then, but I’ve been finding myself holding my bladder more often lately. There are days where I just don’t want to open my mouth and utter a word. This is a difficult thing to make people understand, so I don’t bother.
Today my landlady has her granddaughter around. She looked at me like every child would – as though I was an alien. After a fucking “Ni hao”, I felt like slapping her mouth. She’s screaming and laughing like a witch. I can’t stand this any longer. Envious of children because they are who I never was. As a child I’d kept my mouth shut most of the time. A monster used to tell me to keep my mouth shut. It had even outlived the child that I was.

I wish my mum remembered whether or not I cried at my birth. All I remember is the blue medical clamp…

Here’s my mask, does it make me look I’ve aged? I have aged.

I wish I had meine eigenen vier Wände.

I’m sick of telling friends about my life, but what else do you talk about with friends? How come I manage to feign enthusiasm? In Germany, it was a lot easier, we just went dancing, but I’ve forgotten how to dance.

I’m so tired. But I grant myself no day off, there is no time. I’m proud to say that within 6 days I produced 7000 words. I’m getting further and further with Somewhat Damaged; I still need more time but I can’t afford to take the time. I wish. During the studies, I should have dedicated more time to writing rather than only 8-10 hours a day. For a slow writer like me, I NEED MORE TIME. More time, more fucking time.

I’m accused of being naïve, biased, cynical and not knowing what I want. I’m none of that. Think what you want. I’m just fucking tired!!! But there is no time to be tired, no time to wait. There are wolves out there; I have to take care of things and myself. I have to face so many people, deal with so many people, so how dare you describe me like that? Be lucky if you have the opportunity to choose people that you want to interact with. In the big city you cannot do that. And it just happens that you bump into arseholes every day.
The only reason why I let the brainwash process occur was that it had put me into a good mood; it had indirectly made me believe that quick success was possible. It was too good to be true, so I dwelt in it for a while.

You don’t even know why I do what I do. I am a mistake machine. My life builds on mistakes, miserable, menacing, mortifying mistakes. Do you ever believe that you don’t deserve certain things? But you know you can make yourself deserve them by working hard? To work hard on something takes time; it always does. But as an artist you always have to work twice as hard. People with life numbers 2, 4 and 8 are the fuckers who know exactly how to get their way round the business world. Am I being biased again? Probably, but common, it’s nothing to be taken seriously, you know. It’s only a way to explain the inexplicable. I LIKE MAKING THINGS UP. You should know by now…

Due to certain medication, I’ve lacked appetite, which was good, because I no longer go to the gym, but now feeling all hungry again, I wonder how I’ll survive this.
Maybe I should jog around the cemetery.

Sometimes I think about the best year of my life so far and it was between the ages of 16-17. Millennium – that was it. I made my first proper friends; I went to Poland for an exchange and it was the first time I got drunk. Everyone loved me. And then a stupid realisation occurred: I didn’t like myself.

First day at work tomorrow, I no longer care. I sold myself for a low price because it never occurred to me that I was in any way valuable. Not yet.

8 days

For some reason the last 8 days happened so quick, but there is just one thing that I have realised. And it’s not having written. I’m already out of rhythm; I’ve lost the vibe for a chapter, and I also noticed how ridiculous I’ve been acting in the last eight days. I haven’t spent a day on my own in the last eight days. In the last eight days I have been pretending what I’m not. And I tried to convince myself that it was a good thing; showing the ambition to succeed in business, creating another part of me that would make the real me look dumb.

Maybe I’m trying to escape into multiple characters, but I am not, I love and hate myself too much and the balance is always perfect.

My decision to live for my family and to work my arse off has come to a crisis. If I want to pay off my debts, I’ll firstly have to deal with a change of attitude. I thought I had adopted that particular attitude required, but I realised that it was a denial of who I really am. There are so many people in this town who are trying to fuck me over.
It all makes me want to lie to everyone. I’m getting tired of telling any of you the truth. You don’t deserve it.

Looking after my family is the next task and I will have to abandon more than half of my precious time to make it happen.

I’m not sure whether the adaptation of positive thinking has caused these incredibly ecstatic moments in the last eight days. Maybe it was part of that brainwash that I got, but at least it made me happy and ambitious for a while, but all that was not for a sincere purpose. Anyway the positive mental attitude has gone. Just now. It felt strange anyway, but I have been hopeful in the last eight days. I actually believed that I could get somewhere…anywhere. Don’t get me wrong, I still believe in hard-work. Saturday children are hard workers.

Then I told my mother about my second interview at that agency today and that they hadn’t got back to me, yet. Then she said ‘You probably didn’t get it, then…”
That was it pretty much.
I suddenly froze inside and my hopes were gone.
As if she believed that she and dad will always have to look after me until I’m on my death bed or something.
What am I if my parents really think that way?
I’m not sure how much they actually believe in me to be honest. They don’t even know me except my volcanic anger and yet I live for them.

I’m confused.
I want to be alone.

Why are people so fucking clingy and want to be my best friend? I don’t want to be your best friend. I just want you to count on, because you can count on me. That’s all I want and it’s fair. You know me, I play fair, I always do, but you don’t.

I just want to be alone.
Alone and do all the stupid things that I do on my own without having anyone knowing. I’m tired of you pointing out my mistakes. Don’t you understand that the only reason why I repeat those mistakes is to piss you off?

You worry about me.
That’s nice and sweet.
But it makes me feel like a little kid incapable of looking after itself.
Me of all people.
Me - the most reliable person you’ll ever meet. Mentally more independent than you. I think twice as far ahead as you.
Or maybe I have become an unruly liar. I’ve met so many of that kind in the last few years that I only just realised that my written exposure is the only truth left; the only truth that I can hold on to, but what is it to you?

I no longer fear employers reading this. They are supposed to judge me by my abilities and not my personality. Why should I be scared to admit that ‘A short history of decay’ has become my bible? And believing that the reason of me being alive is because I believe that Sisyphus is doing the right thing?

How much I love Buk, he said that you need several days of doing nothing, just lie in bed, stare at the ceiling, toss and turn and do nothing. With my OCD and discipline, I cannot do that. Every day has a task and you NEED to fulfil it. You need to work.
If you say you are ‘bored’, it’s because you’re boring as fuck, you don’t know who you are and why you are here. You have no purpose, just kill yourself.
You don’t even have to make up your own task…there always IS something that you NEED to do, urgently, even if it’s to save a snail from the pathway.

How bad has my English become? I haven’t been reading for weeks…I haven’t been writing for eight days.

I think I wouldn’t have survived the eight days without the green tea; the green tea has saved my life, it has kept me focussed and removed all anxieties and nervousness. I’ve been looking London straight in the eye in the last eight days. And London, you are fucking ugly, but you have charisma. Unfortunately you use it for evil purposes. Before I leave, I have to teach you a fucking lesson, you son of a bitch.

Stress, mental scars and other realizations

I miss my gynaecologist, I miss my dermatologist, I miss my urologist and I miss my general practitioner. They are the only men that can save me from falling apart.
Some physical examination.
And no, I am not a hypochondriac. I just think the doctors in the UK aren’t capable.
For the past month I thought I was having seasonal asthma, but it has been an on-going panic attack like never before in my life. Now possible rosacea on my face and again a sensitive kidney. How did that happen? Or did I have it coming? I can’t even leave my room without tons of make-up. I don’t know what the doctor has just prescribed me. But it will be the first time to take oral medication for skin treatment. If it’s so bad now, I wonder what my skin will look like in ten years.

I can smell autumn; it’s been a year since I’ve felt these shivers. And they feel good.

People still won’t shut the fuck up: How are you how are you how are you how are you how are you???
God I don’t want to lie to you, I wish I could. Devil, I wish I could. How about I keep my mouth shut?
It’s so typical for the British to apologise for every fucking thing. Or maybe I just don’t understand the word “sorry”, but to me, it has only got one meaning in this country and that’s pity.
“Sorry”, as a word itself, is usually one of the hardest things to say (among “I love you” or “help me” or “thank you”). Here, “sorry” is used to express pity.
Whenever I feel someone pities me, I just want to smack their gob, especially if I know they don’t even care.
Germans would simply say “Tja” as in “get over it.” I hate it as well, but it’s much more effective, it’s almost like a slap in the face, no pretence.

Wow, the last time I remember feeling this way was January 1st. And then I got absorbed in writing. I could continue doing the same now, if it wasn’t the future. I’ve been putting the future on hold for a year and now it’s seeking double attention. Fucker.
There are creative people who don’t know what to do with their lives. If ever their artistic abilities are required in marketing or advertising, the artist’s art becomes a victim of exploitation; the piece of art is used to make the audience throw its money out of the window, but it doesn’t go to the artist, because he has sold his soul to the firm that he works for.
But isn’t it inevitable nowadays? Mr Hicks, please come and save us!

I have realised a lot of things, but most of all, I’ve realised how stupid I am. I just can’t relax my shoulders, you know.
I think we’re in the exact same era again like in Dos Passos’s book, except I’d call it ‘London City Transfer’. I remember that man saying on the bridge: “What’s the point?”

There are a lot of points. And I haven’t run out of them, yet.
You see, I’m stupid. All I’ve got is a creative mind that keeps me going. I think my I.Q. is just a little over 110, which is low, right? However, my E.I. outweighs yours. And yet, I’ve always wished to be free of emotions.
But I can read your body language, I see the twitch at the corner of your mouth, I see the fake smile, I see your dilated pupils; I can sense almost everything that your body emits. Most of the time, it’s making me sick, because I understand you too much, your emotions become part of me. I can even tell whether or not you need a therapist.
I’m still stupid, because I’m not doing anything about your emotions, like, I wouldn’t send you to a therapist. Do I care?
There are so many people who can’t think for themselves.

I’ve also realised that friends are not there to be relied on. You can’t rely on anybody. But you can rely on me and that’s my greatest burden; a weakness that too many have discovered. Besides, I think about everyone every day, but a lot of people out there only think about you when they need something. Once you’ve helped out, they forget that they have a favour to return, or they are being plagued by laziness. Everyone fucking lacks gratitude.
I personally never ask for favours, no major ones anyway. There is no one to rely on.

I also realised that I need to make another big change – health-wise. Three years ago I replaced my actual breakfast (corn flakes, bread) with fruits and I noticed a positive change. I’ve been eating fruits for breakfast ever since. I haven’t drunk cola for two years and generally I avoid soda drinks. I haven’t chewed gum for years, either, because the idea of aspartame turning into scum that settles in my body puts me off. Scum is harder to get rid of, whereas fat you can burn.
Coffee and black tea have been deteriorating my skin, so I will replace them with green tea from now on, just one cup a day, because one cup of green tea can, in a worst case scenario, keep me up all night. I will stay away from contaminated Chinese snacks (they ALL include preservatives and therefore glutamate).

Do you fucking think I’m exaggerating? Well, you don’t even know that your metabolism’s fucked up and that your body’s intoxicated. You will soon see.
I’m teaching myself patience, it’s all coming too soon – the illness.

When I first had eczema at the age of 13, I didn’t understand what it was. How stressed must I have been at that age? It went away a year later. Then seborrhoeic eczema evolved on my scalp when I was 16 – it’s even here now. In my early twenties facial eczema returned and worsened, panic attack introduced itself, etc. I remember going to the GP twice to make sure I didn’t have asthma. Of course I didn’t.

Yes, stress-induced. Lovesickness-induced, deadline pressure…

There was a lot more to it: gluttony, weight gain, and weak immune system leading to flus, migraines and mid-ear infection. But those times are over.

Then, stress had another idea…
It would make me forget about thirst, so my kidney started poking.

Over the years I’ve learnt to control emotions, and sometimes they aren’t even there. I just find it hard to control anger. Though, it’s an energy that I find advantageous sometimes for creative purposes. There are so many people to be angry with. They are ruining your life, as simple as.
You think I have loved? I can assure you I haven’t.
I only realised a while ago that I’ve never loved my ex. Throughout the years of dating (on/off) it was just the “idea” of being in love; the “idea” of first love being precious…apparently. The truth was that I hadn’t been happy, not for a minute. There was never a sense of security, trust or whatever, but the “idea” and imagination of it. I started lying to myself which wasn’t fun, it’s still not fun. I never used to lie to myself.
In the end I was just used to being with him. He still stalks me on social networks. On my blog he is my top visitor. I think that every time he visits this site, he looks for a hint of him in my words. Here are the words. Empty words.
Nothing left but paralysis, numbness and nausea and a bad bitter taste in my mouth whenever I waste a thought about the past. Other guys left a sweeter taste on my tongue. It’s because they care about health. I think that says a lot.

Now I understand why I’ve been dreading love so much – that chemical reaction. Even my feelings for Nick were stronger, they are still vivid, it’s because nothing ever happened. I have kept the feelings in my Jil Sander bottle. If you ever smell Jil Sander on me, it’s because I like you.
That chemical reaction is fictional – that’s the saddest thing about love. I wouldn’t recommend anyone to think that way. I’m just too Houellebecq-ian and Cioran-ian, except that I believe in hope.

Well, there was no second I didn’t suspect him of cheating. That, first of all, triggered me to start lying to myself, which was worse than hearing his lies. This explains why I even lie to myself today. What does this say about me? That I have become an obsessive dick myself?
I was thinking that because my protagonist (OCD, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) sees a link between her and her obsessive admirer. At least it’s an obsessive admirer capable of making decisions, able to think for himself and able to let go in the end, let go.
For four years I had cherished an “idea”, the “idea” that later unfolded in self-destruction and it’s still in progress, but I’m making my protagonist the victim…
…because I’m selfish.
In German we have a saying…if you dig grave for someone, you’ll fall in it yourself. Yes, I know.

Anyway, the feelings for Nick are kept in my Jil Sander bottle. If you smell Jil Sander on me, you’ll know I like you. You can enhance those feelings, so please do, before I fall in that hole and crumble away.