...I close my eyes and drift away
over the fear that I will never find a way to heal my soul
and I will wander till the end of time
torn away from you...
Lyrics quote from "My Heart is Broken"
by Evanescence
from the album "Evanescence" (2011)
The story I'm about to tell you lies about 16 years in the past. Back then I led a hollywood life that you couldn't imagine. I was frontman of a quite respected metal band, went to art school to train myself in jewellery, painting and arts history and once in a blue moon popped girls I had met at my concerts. Bruce Wayne couldn't have performed any better. Best days of my life, because I hadn't really fallen in love yet and my experience with women so far made clear that drowning in pussy would be my prefered way of committing suicide. [later engraved on the tomb stone "Died doin' what he loved. Peace mothafuckas]". But I was busy being a rockstar and didn't perceive much of other people's problems and realities. My ego was driven by the people who supported all my creative work--and back in the day I had plenty who supported me. Don't ask me why.
In that years I thought I had climbed the Maslow pyramid with ease, because literally everything appeared to work out for me personally. The problem later was that I thought I could get everything I wanted if I just wanted it bad enough; and that didn't work out when I fell in love with this refreshing Viennese sensation of a woman...
... some just want everything
but everything means nothing
if I ain't got you...
... She was about one year younger than me, had dark brown eyes, wore her dark hair long, painted her face like Masuimi Max (just cuter and younger), and was easy to chat with on a platform named MySpace. (MySpace was pretty much a playful predecessor of Facebook, just so much cooler to play with for kids in my age. Anyway;) the two of us eventually met personally for the first time when I came back from a trip to Helsinki, Finnland. The evening I flew back to Vienna a US metalcore band performed twenty minutes from the airport... and that, in my view, was an ideal prolonged vacation. Because metal concerts were my home area back then.
So the atmosphere was fantastic. Nothing says more "Let's get laid" than a metalhead like me who meets a Viennese chic at a concert. If weddings in Las Vegas were as awesome as rock concerts in Vienna, I would have married already. But they aren't, and so a mix of melodic death metal and hardcore in my ear held my head high when we hugged each other to say hello. She asked me if I was exhausted from the flight, I nodded and she promptly ran for two big cups of white whine spritzer. And I was exhausted, and a big cup of white wine spritzer was exactly what I needed in that moment. But she turned out to be a catch for many other reasons...
As in our MySpace chats, she was easy to talk with that night. But the first thing she wanted to discuss, while we were sitting two-some on the floor next to the bar, was her approach to relationships. In that moment I didn't feel like listening, because I wanted to start something planless from scratch; and so I interrupted her monologue about relationships by kissing her as passionately as possible--in order to make my intensions clear. She went with it and we would most of the time just sit somewhere and kiss ...and every time I wanted to tell her something, she would interrupt me with another long-lasting kiss. But that was our first night together: an evening to celebrate life as it is.
The next month or so we would talk a lot via phone and discuss everything in detail that young souls like ourselves had on our minds: deep conversations and lots of stuff to laugh about. It was the only period of my life where I'd actually enjoy long conversations on the phone before going to bed. Sometimes I even fell asleep during the calls, so comfy and cherished I felt when talking to that girl.
...Now as I lay me down to sleep, this I pray, that you will hold me dear
Though I'm far away, I'll whisper your name into the sky
and I will wake up happy...
Lyrics quote from "As I lay me down"
by Sophie B. Hawkins
from the album "Whaler" (1994)
But meetings were far too scarce. Unfortunately, one of the two of us would always have to invest a few hours drive to reach the other person's city and so we would only meet two times in my studio, once at one of my own concerts in Vienna, and once at another concert. With time she for herself then figured out that a relationship with me wouldn't make sense. I, hopeful as I used to be, had to figure that out the hard way since she just tempered out our calls instead of "breaking-up": Less and less she would call me and eventually she wouldn't respond to my calls either. That's why I one day panically canceled arts classes kinda illegally and drove my Audi to Vienna in order to surprise-visit her at work. When I stood at the reception desk of her working place, the receptionist ushered me out of the facility immediately and minutes later my assumed love interest texted me "STALKER". I felt missunderstood... and like shit, but afterwards accepted that future endeavors would be useless. She obviously never really felt the way I wanted her to feel about me. Anyway, I would never see her or hear from her ever again.
You'd imagine that if you never fuck someone and if that fuckable person never tells you that she loves you, you'd get over her with ease since nothing actually happened. But me, I reached a level where I'd fantasize to spend the rest of our young lives together and every plan B would be worth- and useless in comparison to the millions of A plans I had in mind with her (or rather with her in my mind).
This entire experience made me change completely. I suddenly felt as if I needed to be as self-sufficient as possible and therefore tore down everything I religiously had built up around me: I stopped meeting with friends (especially pot smokers by the way) and kept distance from mother and family by constantly performing as an angry, frustrated and hateful child, I assume. A year later my beloved metal band split--certainly because of quarrels I had with the other guys of the band. Eventually I got in a fight with our bass player, my best friend with whom I shared a studio. We soon stopped living together and departed with many things left unspoken. I was suddenly all alone; and however hard it felt, in that situation I thought everything I did was right...
...and I'd walk desperately to find a better life without anyone else in this world.
The sad part of the story is that this girl was a pot chic. There were many signs that I ignored and that I eventually perceived as such when I'd spend the months after the stalker-accusation pondering in solitude about what went awry and what I may have done wrong or something...
I then remembered situations when she was in a bad mood, for instance, when she visited me and complained that I didn't have weed at home. Also, in one of our last calls she would explain in between that she likes hashish though it pushes, though it puts some pressure on you, and stuff. I ignored such stories at the time. Whenever she wanted to tell me about her wisdom about drugs, like in that case, I would divert to another topic. It seems as if I simply wasn't open for drugs back then since I rather orientated on an ascetic life. The only thing I did excessively those years was playing basketball, so drugs wouldn't come in handy.
In sum, maybe that girl that I thought I'd love so much was on a different path... and drugs would be part of her life during a time in which I simply wasn't compatible with her, due to my contrary view. And maybe my reaction to her pro-drug views was something she couldn't handle. I understand it today but couldn't make sense of it back then. I changed into the person she could have had discussions with, even about drugs, but ages later. To become the accessible man she would have loved, I had to ruin my life first.
After this long-distance pseudo-relationship with who I thought would be the woman of my life (not counting my mom) I would never be the same person again. In the summer to come, I dated another awesome, hot chic (pot chic on occasion, by the way) with whom I really enjoyed sex. She knew me from my concerts of course. When I first saw her I thought I was out of her league, but fortunately she had a thing for ugly metal musicians, so I got lucky. However, in an honest conversation, I had to tell her that I wasn't over that Viennese chic. She appeared a bit puzzled then but made clear that she'd get over me by cheating on me with another metalhead. Our affair (she wasn't quite single yet) ended with a fight; from then on she hated me. In retrospective, I get her.
Months later I would try dating again and dated a hot 18-year-old virgin I met in arts school. I introduced her to certain things in life; shouldn't have done that. but we adultly agreed on a serious relationship where I'd get to know her family and the like. She also baked me a cake for birthday and we even participated in her grandparents gold wedding anniversary. But after about three weeks I'd realize that she couldn't fill the void I had created mentally; and so I turned into a power asshole until she broke up with me.
But then I gave in. After finishing art school I stopped dating. I thought, as long as my heart is not open, as long as I am unable to love again, I shouldn't confront the rest of womenhood with my heartache. Too embarassing anyway.
And that's when I decided to live alone for quite some time.
Thanks for reading.
Kulla
