For Jake, the day he had waited for so long had finally come. The day he worked for, hoped for,sweat and bled for, the day for which he had competed with over 600 men. The selection pool for the experiment was wide: men from across the country, of all ages and all walks of life: lawyers, pilots,economists,as well as plumbers, construction workers and a few losers like him. "Loser" had been the word his wife Clara had used when he told her he was quiting his day-job to become a freelancer.

                "Freelancer? Is that what they call losers these days? You better go back tomorrow and beg for your job back. I ain't supporting no loser!"

                 He hadn't gone to beg for his job back the next day and that was, of course, the straw that broke the camels back with his shacky marriage, but hey! you can't make an omelette without breaking the eggs, right? He was sick with Clara anyways, sick of her fits, sick of the boredom she called "family life". Sure, at first he thought he was going to lose his mind,when he saw her packing half of the little they had and drive off that autumn day, but he found he did not miss her group of gossiping lady-friends always around the house, or her constant nagging. It took him months to realize how much it helped him not seeing her dissappointed look every day, to understand how good it is not to hear about somebodys husband who made that much money or that he is not man enough for her or that she could have done so much better than him. It took him even longer for the idea to form in his head that HE could have done a lot better than her, that HE could have done more with his life, had he not married her. But if he really changed, and grew, and left all that behind, how come that now, in his hour of glory, he cannot help but think of what she would say if she could see him? Why does he keep imagining the look of surprise on her face, her jaw dropping, her envy even? He even knows what he would say :"Hey baby!Who's the loser now?"

              No! He had to forget about Clara, forget about her completely, concentrate on a small detail,until she was no longer a person, but an abstract concept, like gravity or supernovas. That worked during the tests. Of course, he was afraid they would see through him, that they will see what a weak man he was, how little will-power he had. You don't go through months of psychological tests without exposing a few skelletons in the closet, like your failled marriage. If these guys sniffed out that he still had moments when he could kill her with his bare hands , that would be the end of the road for him. But he played it smart: whenever they brought her up, he remembered the blond hair in her eyebrow. He had noticed that hair on their first date and found it adorable. Later on, he came to hate it: who did she think she was, lecturing him about stuff, with her single blond hair in her black eyebrows, beneath that mop of long,curly,black hair? She irritated him so badly when she talked (and man! the woman never shut up!) that the only way he could protect her from his rage was to stop listening. He would stare at that blond hair, tuning her out, until her words no longer made sense, they were just sounds, without any particular meaning. That's what he did during the trials too: he called back her image and stared at that hair until his anger passed.

               At this time, Jake had no way of knowing that he wasn't fooling anyone,really. They had sensed his rage, his hatred even, but what had made him qualify was exactly the plasticity of his mind, his ability to distance himself from his own feelings, even the ones that were so intense. There had even been a controversy in the psychologists team: some of them were convinced that at some point he was going to crack under pressure, but the more they poked and probed him about Clara, the more effective his mechanism was. At some point, the idea of bringing him face-to-face with her was on the table. It was eventually cast aside, because it was obvious the woman could not be the monster she had become in his mind. She was far more effective as a memory, a pressure point they could always push to flare his anger.

           I would be more than happy to be able to re-enforce one of the old cliches: life taught me there is so much beauty in the world, that you can never give up, that friends are the most important thing, that the darkest hour of the night is right before dawn and so on..

          But if I am to be true, the biggest lesson I ever learned is that we are all alone. No matter how close you think you get to someone, no matter how much you think other people understand you, no matter how safe you feel around a special person or a group of people,you are still alone.

          Now, considering the fact that I spent the best years of my life and a considerable amount of money talking to my therapist, being afraid of loneliness ,you would think that this realization brought me desperation and misery. Only it didn't. Actually, when I could really embrace this fact, I felt liberated, I felt powerful and for the first time, I felt in charge of my life. Happiness was no longer something that I had to search and find in others, but something I could build and enjoy for myself. I let go of all the relationships that I was keeping just to be less alone and held on to the ones that were bringing me closer to myself and allowed me to grow as a person. I no longer had to shape and mold myself to other peoples expectations and desires and instead I learned to lister to my own ambitions and aspirations. Trust me, after years of trying to fit in, at all costs, it's really hard to know what you really like and what you came to like to please others. I had to redefine who I was, I had to decompose myself and build myself anew. 

         But in the aftermath, I found my essence, I found peace and finally, happiness. 

              When I was growing up, my father used to have this car...A really old model and not very reliable, but it was ours and took my family on vacations, to work, to visit my grandparents and so on. I was about 15 years old when he sold it to get a new one. The person who bought it lived in our small town, but in another neighbourhood, so it was years before I saw it again. I think I was about 21 years old when that happened, and I remember how strange it felt: this object, that had so many of my memories in it, this thing that used to be so familiar, this vehicle that I took for granted, just sitting in the parking lot and I had no access to it. I could tell you exactly  what sound it make when you tried to start it, where all the stains on the back-seat were(where I spilled apple-juice or chocolate syrup), how low you could roll the window without getting it stuck, but I couldn't get in.

                That is exactly how I felt when I saw my ex at my friends wedding, sitting across the table to me, but not mine anymore. Not that I ever owned him, but just as out-of-reach. I knew all the insides of his mind, all the little details about him body, but this time, I couldn't hold his hand or even touch him. And then, there was her...the new "owner", the one that was just getting to know the features but had the steering-wheel in her hands.

               The most evil place I had to be at as a young adult was a wedding and I didn't think it would ever end,I didn't think I could ever leave. Time itself froze in mid-air, fell to our table and we faked a smile and ate it with frosting on top. 

You know that feeling when you're travelling and the strange land you're visiting is great, and the local cuisine is incredible and you don't have a care in the world? Do you also know the feeling of all that being spoiled by the fact that your body cannot adjust to the new environment and you simply cannot defecate? Well, my friend was like that all the time, even at home, every single day of her life. Imagine the horror of having to deal with chronic constipation, not being able to talk to anyone(or almost anyone) about it, out of embaressment, trying to juggle the many activities and responsibilities of a working, single mom when all the while you can't even poop.

After trying every product the pharmacy could possibly offer, every natural remedy, from plum juice to various combinations of foul-smelling herbs, after countless hours of meditation ,yoga, stress-relief techniques and transcendental mumbo-jumbo that did absolutely nothing for her stubborn colon, she came across an article about hypnosis and the wonderful things it can do for such conditions as her own.

The following 3 or 4 months she visited a therapist and practiced suggestion and hypnosis in the scope of relaxation and bowel-movement and it worked as a charm.

Her therapist and her chose a song (some prog-rock obscure song nobody ever heard about) and worked on establishing a mental connection between that tune and the urge to use the toilet.

Every morning,my friend took her Ipod to the bathroom, put on her noisy song, did her business and went about her day easy as a feather.It had gotten to the point that the first few beats of this song would automatically set her bowels in a dancing mood.

She was just telling me how wonderful it felt to be rid of this constant pain-in-the-you-know-what, while we were on the bus to work, when suddenly I saw her face cringe in utter panic, for you guessed it, the radio was on and the local DJ felt like boldly exploring new musical territory that faithful morning. How that DJ came to play a song so obscure I will never know, but I will also never forget the look on my friends face when she realized that the respectable lady that she was, was about to shit herself on the bus.

Of course, everybody in our vicinity smelled what was going on and knew who was the culprit, from the lovely shade of beet-purple-red my friend turned.

As we were leaving the bus, our heads bowed in shame and as I tried to snuffle the laughter that was trying to burst out of me, some gentleman behind us reached the verdict: "I'll tell you this, ladies ain't what they used to be anymore, man!"