“Nobody loves me, nobody cares, Nobody picks me peaches and pears. Nobody offers me candy and cokes, Nobody listens and laughs at my jokes. Nobody helps when I get into a fight, Nobody does all my homework at night. Nobody misses me, Nobody cries, Nobody thinks I'm a wonderful guy. So, if you ask me who's my best friend, in a whiz, I'll stand up and tell you NOBODY is! But yesterday night I got quite a scare I woke up and Nobody just WASN'T there! I called out and reached for Nobody's hand, In the darkness where Nobody usually stands, Then I poked through the house, in each cranny and nook, But I found SOMEBODY each place that I looked. I seached till I'm tired, and now with the dawn, There's no doubt about it- NOBODY'S GONE!!”
- Shel Silverstein
Most of the time my writing process is like this: I have a sentence at 2/3 am that I cannot get out of my head. I know that when I wake up tomorrow, I will have forgotten it. So I have to write it down. But of course it often doesn't stay with that one sentence, I write and write and see where my thoughts take me. The next day I read through the text again, find large parts of it terrible and rewrite it until I like it. The process is necessary for me because I have the feeling that otherwise people can't follow my text and my train of thought, or I always have the feeling that it's better. Also, I'm always much more dramatic at night than I need to be. But there's one thing that gets lost in the process that I'm always sorry about: what I often love about my lyrics is that they're so raw. Such a raw emotional spew. And when I rewrite them, they're well-behaved and understandable and not actually what I wrote at that moment. So I had the goal of once publishing a text that I haven't touched since I wrote it. And like creativity, this text came out of nowhere: I was lying in bed and I couldn't get the first two sentences out of my head. And I wrote and wrote and I even put the laptop away in between and thought, that's enough now. But I couldn't stop. I don't know how long I wrote, but it came out of me in one. And only when I had written the last line, the end, then I could put the laptop away. I was extremely exhilarated by this text because it brought up a lot from my past and yet I also felt a kind of relaxation that I had finished it. And unlike the other texts, I didn't want to read it the next day. I didn't even look at this text for days, afraid of what I had written, because of course I couldn't remember everything. It was only after a week that I opened this document, read through it, took it in and tried to exchange individual words and rewrite it. But I couldn't. He is perfect for me, as raw and cruel as he is. I can't change anything about him. And that's why it's called "Unfiltered".
You have to stop seeing the good in people, but see what they show you. Have to stop dreaming in clichés and expecting miracles. A person shows you what they expect from you, what they want from you and how they see you. You don't need to string letters together for that. You can feel it. And you make the decision to ignore it. You stay in your dream world and decide not to step out. Stepping out means pain, means rejection, means waiting. Means making the same mistakes twice. Means landing face down on the hard tarmac of life again. Means bleeding. Means pain. Means loneliness. Then rather a tender touch, a kind word and maybe, maybe then will come. Someday. Maybe this time the dreaming will be paid off. Rewarded. Maybe now the dreams will come true, just like they always say on billboards or love movies. Maybe this is the moment when everything I give comes back to me. Maybe everything good comes back to me. And maybe someone will just take what they need. No subtext, no hidden sign. Self-benefit. How is this person of any use to me. What benefit can I get from this person. Is this person useful for my life. A farm animal, the human being. A farm animal for the narcissist. And while one pulls the cart and harvests the fields and gives milk and dutifully fulfils all the tasks, without ifs, buts or buts, one looks down on oneself from a distance and no longer recognises oneself. The narcissist stands there as a protective surf, as a dream that can never be reached, and hides behind empty phrases and the motto "just don't do too much". And the thought that one is not doing anything wrong. The farm animal is happy, it has a roof over its head, it has food and it gets just enough affection that it doesn't want to escape and look for another home. Give as much as necessary, take as much as possible. And where does that leave us? We empaths, we seekers, we always smiling, gladly giving and useful people. We don't have blue eyes, rose-coloured glasses or seven clouds. We do everything voluntarily, we smile, we don't let on. Only the mirror sometimes gives us a sad look. And on our way home, a single tear gets lost in our mouth. All sacrifices that have to be made, don't they? Just endure. Endure. Going. Offer. Do. Do. Smile. Blink. Breathe. Give. Give. Offer. Gaze. Give. Hoping. Anxious. Dreaming. It would be so easy. So easy to recognise one's own value. To realise that love comes in all shapes and colours, but that sometimes it is also a black and white decision. You love someone or you don't. A daisy-like easy consideration. To the question, "Do you love this person?" you always have a clear answer. It is not the answer that is difficult, it is the admission. Admitting means pain, means rejection, means waiting. Waiting for a person who makes sense out of usefulness. A person who spells love out of karma. A person who shows us who they really are. Instead, we join the narcissist in building his own path and allow ourselves to be befuddled by our own constructed subjunctives. We build our future in our heads with splendid colours and shimmering sounds. With warm thoughts and endless wishes. And at some point we wake up and no longer fit into this world. But it is our world after all, this is where we belong. Belonging. Arriving. Going there. I belong here. This is my world. I have become the very person I never wanted to be. Addiction. Mendacity. Dishonesty. Tame. Liar. Polluter. I write a lot, but say little. Out of the hope of being asked. The sheet of paper looks at me questioningly, what is there to report today. Which finger did we stretch out today, which hand was taken tomorrow. Pester. Pestering your world with things you don't say but mean and with things you don't dare say. A figure of fun. You are stuck in the deep well, you fell down while fetching water for the narcissist and not even you can help yourself now. You write and write and write and make a construct out of the words to pull you out, you can't think of anything else. I write and write and write and build a construct to pull me out of this madness of feelings and pain, but help me with words that mean the world I write and write and write.
The sheet of paper gets fuller, but my head doesn't get emptier. It is humming. It is humming in my body, but I cannot find the source of it. Is my heart humming or is my head humming. What shall I redeem, what remedy can I administer. Is there one? Writing. Perhaps writing will give me the answer to my questions, perhaps if I fill my pages long enough and burn my keyboard and see my fingers only blurred, perhaps my fingers will lead me to the answer to a question my head is incapable of asking. Pester. Pollute the clean white pages with your thoughts. Dumping your baggage of words like the narcissist dumps his desires on you.
Stop seeing the good in writing, but see what it shows you. Yourself.
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