Just tell me you see me, okay? And it doesn’t even matter if I genuinely want you or not. I just looked at your pictures and we exchanged a few words, and in that fraction of a moment it crystallized inside me that you look like the word “No”, like all the women who rejected me in the past— alienated, distant, unattainable. Like a faraway star. And your “No” is like an accusing finger pointing directly at all my flaws. It looks down on me from top to bottom like some arrogant snob, flooding me with all the emptiness and worthlessness I already feel inside.

Listen, I can’t breathe. I’m driving the long way to see you for the first time, and my heart is pounding beyond the rhythm of emotion, creating this familiar suffocating sensation that slowly empties me of air until there’s no breath left, and the oxygen runs out. Listen, you’re breathtaking.

Excitement mixed with anxiety, that maybe this time I’ve found the one who’ll banish all the fantasies out of my mind and perhaps I’ll marry her. But instead of getting excited, I play the disgustingly familiar game with myself: let’s find your flaws so I can momentarily regain control over my feelings—the power I’ve handed you without your knowledge.

I try to breathe and lean back, but the support is a broken reed and when it snaps, I shape its hollow shaft into a barrel aimed at you, marking you with a crimson cross—for I must thaw the ice within you. You probably don’t know, because I never told you, but inside me lives a little boy, frozen in time, growing colder, calling for help. Listen, he and I are longing for the warmth inside you.

Hey gorgeous. Wasn’t yesterday something? The ice melted, did you notice? It melted, and suddenly I see things in you I deeply dislike. That charming laugh turned silly now breaks my heart—the same heart that just moments ago was racing beyond the speed of emotions. But hey, I’m breathing again. Breathing through the pain, finally finding relief. So give me a moment to catch my breath before I mourn the death of the fantasy.

Last shards of a dream—and that’s it.

Listen, why do you keep texting me, insisting on talking every single moment? I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to see you—not now, not tomorrow. Maybe Friday. After dinner. Late—maybe we’ll sleep together, depending on how bad I feel with all the shit I’m putting us through right now. Trust me, I know how pathetic this whole thing is, and I’m dying to free you from the sticky poison that is me. Because you deserve better.

You text me, and I can’t find the mental strength to respond. The thought of talking to you at the end of the day feels like a burden I don’t have the energy to handle. Your need for closeness grates on my nerves, costing me my peace of mind. Honey, you’re one message away from that terrifyingly familiar text: “Hey, I’ve been thinking, and… this isn’t it”.

I’m spinning in this endless loop like a carousel out of control, dizzy and a step away from throwing up. Turns out I overate again and lost my balance.

Now stop. Steady your breathing: Four seconds in, six seconds out. Brief pause. Four seconds, six seconds.

Alright.

Listen, I’m breathing again. And along the way, I met someone else, terrifyingly beautiful and her beauty renders me powerless. She gives me attention and maturely communicates her feelings, but I’m looking for the catch. I need someone else on the side to regulate my anxiety, so I found four more. My appetite is insatiable,

just don’t swallow too much.

Don’t throw up.

Oh.

Listen, I can’t control it, but the megalomaniac side of me comes out and pulls me into an ego trip of raw power.

The invulnerable side of the moon.

Hey, isn’t it great that we got closer? Sorry - I know I wanted this so badly at the beginning but now I’m in the anxiety phase over someone else, more mysterious than you. Sorry I didn’t mean that, but every time I try to focus on you she’s the one floating into my thoughts.

The mysterious side of the moon.

Hey mysterious woman, who I decided is as beautiful as a statue and sends me mixed signals. I wanted to play clean with you. I showed attention and consideration. I cut off past ties, deleted the dating apps, and even bought you a gift. You have no idea how hard it is for me now to limit myself only to you. Look, I swallowed my ego when you replied dryly. I swallowed Klonopin when you didn’t reply at all. I swallowed two more pills when you told me you missed me, but your words didn’t match your actions.

But now you’ve crossed every boundary.

I played detective again: You said you missed me, and I desperately wanted to believe it. When you withdrew, I told you I need to break free from the pain this relationship floods me with. Over coffee, you looked deep into my eyes. You told me you choose to stay and appreciate my maturity. You said “Stay”, but all your body language screamed “Go”. You texted that I’m special, that you don’t want to starve the little boy living inside me—that he’s beautiful and special, just like me. And then you vanished.

I wanted so badly to hold onto that, do you understand? Because no one ever talked to him without a filter like you did. Your silence builds walls inside me and your half-truths close me up, folding me inward like a flower. Hand on heart and without an ounce of cynicism—I just wanted to know you, to get closer to you. I wanted to rest my head on your lap and cry. I just wanted to cry beside you, because honey I haven’t cried in years and I’m on the verge of tears that won’t break through but only choke my throat. But you’ve dimmed my consciousness to such an extent that I can no longer tell truth from lie.

What was real?

Hold on, just a moment. I’ll be right back. I just need to throw up. Where were we? Oh, right. We were at the part where you treated me the way I treated a thousand women before you. Now I remember.

Listen, in the dark, alone, with my head glued to the toilet bowl, I broke up with you in my heart. Now I’m setting a boundary. I’ve cut off all contact until you take responsibility. It’s okay, I’m not punishing you—I’m just protecting myself. I’m human too, you know. I’m breathing again, and with every breath you matter less.

The scarred side of the moon.

Night, and I get another message from you. You better settle for the cold shoulder I’m giving you now, because the grown-up in me wants to heal from you, but my fragile ego seeks to close this circle of pain. You’re on the hurting side now, aren’t you? Just take the hint and fuck off before shit turns ugly. My old self is trying to force his way back. I’m holding him back.

But if you’ve already sent a message, that means you really saw me, right?

60 milligrams of numbness and 0 measures of wisdom and common decency. That's what the Creator, or whoever fucked me over as a child, seems to have intended for me. It's not greatness of soul, or passion, don't call it passion. It's a chaotic life, full of tension and hiding.

These splits tear me in two. Half-people. Half-women, half-pills, half-truths, 60 milligrams of numbness cruising through my bloodstream. And just a moment ago I felt something, only a moment ago. And that feeling is slow to return.

When I want to go back to live inside a womb. Or to stop crying next to you. Everything drains into the black hole from which all the contradictions began. When I love you, I say it, with all the mannerisms I've acquired over the years. Don't judge me harshly, I'm just a little obsessive right now. And lost. I'm a lost child, even though I'm no longer a child, maybe a bad child. Because there's no such reality as a good child. There's only a child who feels good. And I've been feeling like shit for a long time.

60 milligrams and one huge pit in the soul. And mental gashes that psychiatrists write post-doctorates about.

Today I cried again like a person who lost his God. And human image. my eyes burn and I look at my world through a glass pane filled with tears from recent nights. Yesterday I saw you looking at me, and I caught the pity. How I revealed to you that I cum the strongest only after hearing you scream in the room that I'm not sick. "You're not sick baby, you're not sick!". All this problematic genetic baggage is now in your belly.

But I wanted to hear that lie from you. Because from your mouth it still sounds credible to me. And you have a big heart that contains within it everything a man longs for. But yesterday we talked and I felt it packing its bags. I wonder if it saddens me, it does. But I'm not angry, I'm realistic - with this borderline and treacherous madness, no one knows how to cope.

The hugs from you were more beautiful than all the biggest words I wrote about you. And the dreams about you briefly brought back a sense of humanity to me.

Thank you.

Those were the years of pain. At that time, I was exhausted from the frequent and relentless attempts to get myself back on the right path. Everything I held close fell from my hands the moment I grasped it, and I cheated on every girlfriend I ever had, not out of hatred, God forbid, but due to a desperate attempt to fill some bottomless void.

Now I am drained, sunk into a terrible fatigue. Through the window shutters of my spacious and alienating apartment, blows the same evening breeze that comes from the sea, and crumbling wishes into rust. Above my head, night moths flutter, their eyes dark and sealed, and they don't notice the hand trying to bring about their demise. Soon, the purple and glowing bulb will turn on, tempting them to caress the source of light until their final and inevitable incineration. And the sound of their sizzling will echo in the void, reminding me of what happens to those who are easily dazzled.

Then I will go to the living room and drown another porn actress in my wet sorrow. She will have no chance; she will float in the thick and hereditary material until her head sinks and will not rise again. She will probably be a brunette with a long name divided into different syllables. I wonder what shitty life led her to my screen, or maybe she had a warm and embracing childhood in her Latvian village—I don't really know.

I also wanted to write that recently my appetite has returned, after it died along with the idylls and moral dictates. The symptoms of relief from the depression included devouring anything that contained blood and fat. The blame for my dismal state can be attributed to various reasons, but chiefly to a brief fuck with some girl from an anonymous firm at a random street corner. Afterwards I returned to my apartment, threw up my soul in the toilet, and went back to sleep next to my dozing girlfriend. That night I realized—I will never be faithful to one, not to a woman and not to God. Because that's how it is, these selfish hazel eyes never saw beyond me, and I failed to keep my desires in check.

All I can do is smother those voices within me as if they were small fires. But the problem is that I'm an overt pyromaniac, and the allure of burning gets to me in any situation. I still wish that everything here would catch fire and rise in flames - so what if I built it all with my ten fingers?

The hardest moments for me are when shame and regret spread in every direction. They squirm inside me like starving maggots, greedily devouring the lowest and most repulsive levels of my personality. I don't know, maybe it's okay to let things rot on their own; then some new organism will thrive within the dead tissues.

Recently, I realized that these depressions consume me to the bone. On nights like these, the inner worm would crawl up to my ear canal and whisper in a hoarse, yet caressing voice: "You are alone, and there is no God where you are." Then I would still catch myself pondering: so what if I am sunk deep in the forty-nine gates of impurity? So what if I constantly break my own heart? After all, it is well-known that broken hearts beat forever, an eternal guarantee of their existence. But how much can a person quarrel with himself, with the instincts embedded in him? And what did I even ask for—reconciliation? Self-acceptance? A real hug? I too deserve a small taste of all these.

I look out the window again. The night is black and deep, and the visibility is poor. My pain pierces it like orange tracer bullets across high-voltage lines. All I want is to signal to the plane circling above me not to crash into me.

An aviation disaster. Heavy smoke billowing. Casualties and injuries everywhere.

One evening, I was dazed by alcohol and caffeine. The skies were wide open above me, and I saw a piece of cloud merging with the concrete building across.

I sat on the bed naked, talking to her on the phone. She told me, "I was in the hospital a few days ago. I swallowed some pills: mind-altering, serotonin-stimulating, loneliness-reducing, insanity-inhibiting." She told me her roommate found her drooling on the sofa in a state of advanced stupor and called the authorities. "I also remember fluorescent lights, stomach pumping, and a psychiatrist who talked to me on my sickbed," that's how she told me while I was lying on the bed, curling smoke in silence.

I didn't know what to say. I wanted to tell her – “Next time don't stop halfway, love”. But only a faint remark escaped me: "I miss you." She was a good woman. She had a firm ass and freckles on her nose. She used to send me poems she wrote, signing them each time with the same echoing line - "Yours, Rachel, your younger daughter." And I always wanted to reply: "Listen, you write like shit," even though she wrote better than me.

She continued to write and tell about a world that had lost its passion and compassion and its God. Every Friday morning, I would open my email and find two new poems from her. Sometimes I would write to her, "Amazing." Sometimes, that God gives writing talent to those he wants to take revenge on. At times, I would write my reasoned opinion in comments and send it back to her.

I also remember she had freckles on her stomach and two large ones on her thigh. And that I remember very well, because it was during the time when I was lonely as a motherfucker, looking for someone to find solace in. She was a beautiful fuck, and all I wanted was to take her to bed already and cling to some cheap touch. What I remember the most is that after I would cum in her mouth or digestive system, depending on the period, we would hug for a long time. Her head was pressed against my shoulder, and I would stroke her pitch-black hair. Then I would read to her words I wrote and wait for her responses. She used to tell me, "You write beautifully", even though she wrote much better than me

In the end, she hung up.

I miss you, kiddo.

This sudden,

gloomy

and intermittently scorching day

will eventually end.

The walls are too thick,

or too thin

for me.

Blame the weather

for everything.

And I've been stuck for too long

in this alienating yet magnificent city,

finding no solace in the sea waves,

nor in the nights laden with scents of jasmine

and sewage,

nor in the stars

that once danced in my heart

but now are just tiny shards

of shattered glass.

Not in the deceitful comforts of the morning,

nor in the remnants of her skin under my fingernails,

nor in the sin lurking around the corner,

nor in the small regrets

following fleeting pleasure.

And here comes the familiar

and uncontrollable

anxiety,

gripping my throat.

So tight.

So, I quickly descend towards the interlocked tiles

of the boulevard

and settle on a bench.

I looked up.

A murky moon hangs above our ghost town,

and it isn't tired of it.

"Now a bit to the right," I tell it,

"Lovely, honey. Give me more of that gaze."

It had scars all over its body.

Then a star fell there,

and I didn't manage to make a wish.

And if I had made one,

I would have wished for the star to fall on me.

Once, I asked another star to be loved,

to be desired,

to be wanted.

Today, I am at the critical point

between self-destruction and redemption,

in the naïve attempt to transmute myself

from rust into metal,

from lead into gold.

It happens to me about once every six months.

I look at the sun and see only dark colors. And if I try hard enough, I can notice faint sprays of lighter hues, but all this ambition is dangerous because one can go blind from such prolonged gazes. I've also diagnosed myself with a general lack of motivation for anything that doesn't involve aimless typing on the laptop.

These are without a doubt the blessed symptoms of the depression that's about to crash down on me again, and it's not to be taken lightly. In moments like these a thought arises in me with disturbing obsessiveness: You must not stay alone; the situation could worsen. So I send a message in the friends' WhatsApp group, and it reads: "Who's up for a meet?" Everyone responds, and everyone is out of reach.

No choice, I tell myself, the remaining strength must be mustered for a city stroll. I genuinely believe that a person needs to be in motion to slow down their thoughts, and the more muscles in the body are harnessed to the cause, the more likely they are to keep the inner breaking point at bay. By the time that happens, I've already called out of work sick for the day.

So I go outside, wander the boulevard and observe the passersby chattering themselves to death. All the smiling children of society, I suspect, are coming out of the closet today to celebrate at my expense. Even the antipathetic vendor at the corner kiosk is now handing out disturbing smiles as if he's under the inspiration. And he's one of the greatest misanthropes I've ever met. Once, in a moment of distraction, I let him unfold before me his existential doctrine about the pointlessness of humanity, I was so stoned that I ended up hypnotically echoing keywords that kept coming up in the conversation, like fire and brimstone, until he realized he was preaching to the void. Now he's selling smiles for every pocket, served piping hot straight from the blood of his heart.

This anomaly deceives me in its ambiguity.

I keep wandering, and on one of the sidewalks someone I know chooses to smile all the way at me just to say hello, unaware that our existences are currently contradictory. Nothing good will come of this, I say to myself, just don't let her notice the inner rot gnawing at me or a conversation on the subject will open by mistake. She'll probably say - "It's okay, my heart is hungry too", and then in an act of self-defense I'll throw in her face: "So make a filter out of it and smoke your soul to oblivion. Pathos is me, baby". Lucky I'm skilled in such cases - camouflaging my mental terror is an art I've developed over the years, a byproduct of my secretive and guarded nature anyway. So I responded to her with a flirty language: "How lovely, yes, me too, thank you, kisses, goodbye."

I continue the stroll.

Traffic lights, buses on King George Street, crosswalks, how lovely. Couples with dogs, veiled looks, I've scrutinized you all and you all failed. Everything moves sluggishly, as if someone placed a block in my brain's nerve center. There's nothing but a feeling of a massive down. I kept walking a thirsty distance until I reached the end of the neighborhood, where at a bus stop, I lit another cigarette. The heat intensified more and more, and a craving for cheap wine arose in me, I set my feet towards a corner kiosk to get my favorite kind. I gulped down thebottle in a few deep sips until a few drops remained, maybe a thousand. Then, the desire for some vandalism arose, so I moved away from any living soul and there, in an abandoned alley, I launched the bottle straight into a wall.

A thousand wet hopes scattered there on the sidewalk.

Out of the corner of my eye, I notice two pairs of eyes of uninvited guests who had witnessed the whole act, seemingly unbothered by the aforementioned hooligan behaviour, because they too have a bellyful of disdain for the existing order. I walked away from there adventure-sated, while taking a self-oath that I'll never do it again. But in the name of all the saints from all religions, the feeling was fucking amazing.

The hours passed under the inspiration of the heavy heat while walking through the streets familiar to the point of dread. I suspected that the daily stroll was not bearing fruit. I mean, my inner state wasn't showing an improving trend. I debated whether to turn towards my apartment and go to sleep and continue wandering the next morning, or to head into the city center right then and hope for the best there. In a moment of spark, I decided to conduct an experiment, checking if I could manage to think of nothing, absolute nothingness for a minute. At first, I didn't succeed. Then I couldn't think of anything but the fact that I was trying not to think. When that passed, I wasn't thinking about anything anymore. If you could succeed for a minute, you'd succeed for ten, and just like that, whole hours passed without thinking.

The day began to turn blue, the sun took on a reddish hue as it sank lower, and the terrifying heat made room for a cool breeze. Emily just called, said maybe you'll come over, as I'm just making some culinary disaster here. We can suffer together. I said, okay I'll come. Despite all the fights and chaos between us, I needed spiritual mediation to save me from trouble and distress. I came to her, city outskirts, big apartment, with hesitant steps.

She stands at the end of the kitchen in front of a pan that doesn't look like a pan, wiping her hands on a small apron and cooking in several pots at the same time - anything to avoid the loneliness. We have finished eating and I urge her to come with me to another location. She complies. I lead her through the rusty railing towards the bed, moving the clothes between us and sitting closer to her. I am already at zero range and I extend my hands, one to her porcelain face and the other to her glorious chest. She looks at me and I, in a soul's agony, try to signal that everything is not-okay, not in words, but with hinting eyes. All my charisma is hesitant because of the situation, and suddenly I understand those who spend hours looking out at the view, wondering why bother to speak at all, when you can just vomit your soul through your eyes.

She looks into my depths as if I am a transparent wall of thoughts. Convinces me that we need to talk about it, that the bereaved look with the swollen eyes from too many sleepless nights frightens her. It settles in my heart that I have to yield to her and allow myself the opportunity to release the dark thoughts weighing heavy on me, even if it means my words will come out in a clumsy mumble and a lack of self-synchronization.

So I began to pour my heart out nonstop, and she looks at me, small and brave, as I cast my sickly light waves onto her. I spoke the truth, I said what I think. That every time I start enjoying light serotonin flows in my brain, a flash of anxiety threatens to easily drag me down to the depths of hell. That during certain periods, existence becomes so ridiculous and idiotic that I simply don't leave the bed out of self-pity and if I do move, it's just to the bathroom, barely. And then it changes, something inside me sprouts, suddenly I'm happy and I don't know why. The faded colors return to themselves and sometimes I hallucinate sunlight even when there is none. And so it goes for long periods, back and forth.

And this was the essence of her response: You're experiencing a small touch of sadness, far from all the intensity you describe, and then your world collapses. That's because you simply don't know how to cope, with anything. I bet you wandered around the city today in a daze, like some moron. If you continue to be preoccupied with repressing and extinguishing emotions, you'll be stuck with this light and distant pattern for the rest of your life. You don't want that.

I'm not sure I agree with her, except for the dazed wandering - I really did walk around for hours today like the last of the morons, and she seems a bit dismissive in her diagnosis. But at least most of it is under control, because she's taking everything away from me with these tough and maternal instincts of hers. She's my biggest believer. I also think she was happy during these hours, for I believe that devoting herself to me from the depths of her soul does her good. She just loves this hole in my heart that needs filling. And I know it's not fair to exploit this fact, but it's either her or staring out the windows and sinking into myself, then dropping a shoe out of the window to gauge the depth and height as a kind of last resort experiment. It's hard to beat that.

And then she hugs me, breathing me in deeply until I almost disappear into the hug. She looks up at me with smudged eyes and starts kissing me, pressing me against her warm, inviting body. I almost stumble from the suddenness, as we collapse embraced onto the bed. I kiss her with eyes wide open and can't see a thing from all the shame, trying to understand what I am doing with all the cards I've just laid out. We got tired. It was already five-thirty in the morning, and outside it was already dawn twilight. She told me let's smoke a cigarette and go to sleep.

We went out to the roof with a fatigue that was wreaking its havoc on us, barely lifting our heads. So we smoked quickly and stuck our heads to the floor so we wouldn't get dizzy. On the last drag, I stole a glance upwards to catch a tiny segment of the light spectrum. I looked at the sun, and it was surrounded by a huge circle of colors that began to encompass almost everything, smearing my entire field of vision in shades of red. I quickly lowered my head and felt some salty drop making its way from my throat to my eye, burning several organs along the way. At that moment, I burst into tears in a kind of powerful and sharp wail while making unclear noises that I couldn't express with words. An adrenaline rush of excitement pounded in my brain, Emily leans towards me and says, "My sweetie, everything is actually okay. I think you're out of disruption."

I nodded in agreement.

Someone in the feed wrote, "I'm crying all the time." And I almost cried, because it's been so long since I've been able to cry. I'm always on the brink of tears that refuse to break through.

Someone else tweeted, "Why isn't there a pill against a broken heart?" and my heart almost broke, because all our pills nowadays are against something. Against depression. Against anxiety. Against pregnancy. But what about for? For feeling. For pain. For crying. For living.

Someone on the therapy couch asked me how I feel. I asked if he wanted the evasive answer or the oxymoron. He said evasive."Numbness," I replied. "And the oxymoron?" he wondered. "It's painful".

Hungry, horny, tired - the usual state. Craving for caffeine, nicotine, soulful night-time conversations. Insomnia as a way of life, benzodiazepines masking an aching heart that can't bear the burden. Everything starts losing color, and an inner voice urges that in my condition, I don't need more Klonopin, but great mental strength. So I try to jerk off. Conjuring up faded figures straight from the memory bank. Thinking of me choking someone. Choking her with a hand, choking her with a cock. Hand bent behind, as per tradition. I Can't get it up. Can't fucking get it up. I feel like punching all the walls of this sad house until this bent hand can never be open again. Just a few wild thoughts and solitudes I have on this night, and I'm already tired of self-pleasure over pixelated women at laptop resolution, and I searched the web for hug porn but found none. Do people even hug in porn? I roll another cigarette. The moon at its zenith in the night sky. My pupils are the diameter of a needle. My girlfriend is sleeping now, and I'm not into her tonight. My WhatsApp fills up with filthy messages that will never come to fruition, because I have no interest in them. Meanwhile, some girl says she's not afraid to go outside to see the abundance of stars. She can go fuck herself, and if I see a falling star tonight, I'll wish for it to fall on her. Now I'm in the mood for cheap wine and anti-anxiety meds. And it's not self-destruction at all if it's because of someone. It doesn't hurt if it's numb. It's not a choice if it's a default.