I

I am sitting in our room in a hotel — a sanatorium to be precise — an old soviet building that had been renovated some time ago though some parts of it still show the time to which it originally belonged.

I cleared the table so my laptop can fit in here, though there are still four piles of nappies on my left — from time to time, through almost three years of my motherhood, I try to imagine how many nappies we’ve used during this time and sometimes I regret that I didn’t start counting from the first one. I guess it would be an interesting number. For some reason I am thinking about someone I know who became a mother almost at the same time as me — her plan was to use eco-friendly, self-made nappies, apparently healthier than commercial ones. As far as I remember she gave up that idea pretty quickly and I don’t blame her, though a little sarcastic thought can’t help but crawl through my mind.

“What is the worst thing about depression?” I ask myself on our walk in a sanatorium garden with Max, pretending I am an interviewer, interviewing a version of myself who somehow made it to great fame and is now being interviewed by famous Russian journalist and media figure Ksenia Sobchak.

“The worst thing,” I answer, “is the loneliness of this sensation” (I speak Russian back then but now decide to make notes of my conversation in English, don’t ask me why but I guess writing in English gives me the freedom to actually not be me, but someone else, like watching myself from the outside and judging my own life and making myself believe that my life is worth something). “Experience, in fact. You can’t really call depression a sensation. It is an experience, though I really got tired of this word, just as I get tired of all words overused in modern life like some advertising slogans. I guess any illness — and depression is an illness, I need to emphasize — is a lonely thing. But somehow I feel that it is worse than an illness like cancer, for example, because people and society, though not able to feel the pain of the sufferer, do empathise and feel sorry for the ill one more and more easily than those coping with depression. The attitude is definitely different. I guess no one can really get what it feels like to not want to live and question your existence, not for philosophical reasons but for the sake of actually being in that state of mind that has nothing to do with where you are in your life, who you are, your looks and other things that altogether create a human. You can’t know it unless you know. This is the fundamental thing about depression — that your basic instinct (as far as I understand from my fragmented knowledge of psychology, biology and other sciences) — to survive — fades. And from what I know this process is unnatural, isn’t it? Different people have it to various degrees but they do have it. And this is the second worst part of it — nothing really matters on some molecular level if the importance of your own life is questioned by you — I will repeat, not by your own choice but by the choice of hormones and a series of genetic and other obstacles that might have started way earlier than you as a sufferer were even conceived. Isn’t that weird?

II

We are driving through the country with a local man called Daur with whom I arranged our little trips here and there in Abkhazia instead of organised group travel. He said this way we won’t have to follow the schedule of the group but will have our own one. Little does he know that for me it will mean following his schedule and the slight changes of his mood instead — trying to figure out if he is happy or not really with us (even though it’s me paying money for this trip), walking for two hours around an old train station that eventually leads us to a little church built (in fact just organised) straight in a cave. Apparently it is a place of sanctuary of one of Christ’s apostles, Simon the Zealot. I google it and find out that the right way to call it is The Grotto of the Holy Apostle Simon the Zealot. Nice. It is almost too pretentious for the humble character of the place.

The nature on the path towards the grotto is absolutely fabulous. And as cliche as this word sounds it is fabulous and I can’t think of any other word to describe it. When we enter the grotto with Max after going up some pretty steep stairs made of ‘blocks’ as Max calls them, which are just pieces of local gray mountains, I am waiting for this sensation to come up straight from my gut as it always does when I travel and lose my breath at seeing something new. But this time it doesn’t do the trick and I get upset thinking straight into my depression as the main cause for the lack of feeling. However, some time later I realise that it also might have something to do with the fact that I am by myself with my soon-to-be three-year-old son and the nature of travelling and discovering places has changed. I do not have only myself now to pay attention to. I have my toddler son as my companion with whom I have to chat almost non-stop and, what’s also important, have an eye on, take care of him and make sure that his little feet don’t slip off the ‘blocks’ which he is of course absolutely crazy about. I breathe out realizing that not all changes and difficulties in my life are caused by my current mental health situation.

We are back in the car and Daur seems to be happy for us and for himself — while we were walking he was entertaining himself in the car doing crossword puzzles in a newspaper. Will I ever be able to enjoy something as simple as that?

I am looking out of the window while Max is finally calming down after six hours and falling asleep in my arms. The state of Abkhazia reminds me of my own state. It’s tatty and scratched, very melancholic even with the sun shining, and with every turn of my head I see — it is falling apart. Something is dying — I can see it in the buildings around and the sad-shaped eyes of local people, just like my own. But they almost welcome that death, or at least they go with it, holding tight and keep living their lives and doing what should be done. Because they have faith. And this faith lays in strongly following what comes naturally — sun in the morning, darkness at night. Tangerines and oranges in winter and all the rest in its full blossom in late summer. That is what’s real and is always there, even if everything man-made around stops making sense.

III

We managed to get sick, Max and I. Both in our own ways — me in some weird allergic kind of virus reaction to something, while Max was sick for two days in a row, probably after our pork shashlik (barbequed meat) session on the trip, but I actually believe it was milk he had later.

This reminded me of a story from my childhood when I was around the same age as Max now, but one year older. So I was four. I got poisoned with a watermelon that my mum bought from our local Siberian market — which is a normal thing to do now, but back then in 1990 watermelons in Siberia were a real event that people were looking forward to for a whole year trying to get the best ones so they can have those sweet red memories for the year ahead. Best ones were believed to be bought in late August-early September which my mum did. And still my little body reacted in such a strong way that the same night as I ate the watermelon, my mum was holding me in her hands and I was barely breathing. I can’t imagine what she went through, despite all the difficulties in our current relationship. We spent the next month in a hospital, me and mum. One of her favourite stories is when I was telling nurses there trying to inject my pale tiny veins that they were not very good at their job. It apparently made them all laugh and have me as their favourite so they would bring me empty cardboard boxes of imported (really rare stuff back then!) medicine as presents. I was happy. So I do know what it is to be happy with simple things, don’t I?

For a very long time after the incident my mum saw nothing but rotten yellow mash inside watermelons. That’s what her fear looked like.

Last night I had a dream in which I saw a massive black tarantula. I remember I wasn’t scared of it, more unsettled and intrigued. Somebody — I think it was actually a friend of mine — asked me to look after it. The insect was trying to escape all the time so in the end I had to cover her living space — a transparent glass box with sand — with another layer of flat glass. I remember feeling — no way this tarantula should get out. When in the morning I checked the meaning of the dream and its symbolism, it was as usual full of very controversial things, but one explanation struck me. All spiders are known to be symbols of patience and persistence, stamina in a way — as you can imagine a spider methodically carrying on with their task of weaving their web. While at the same time spiders can symbolise danger, fear, enemies and your own dark side. It said the interpretation is up to how you felt about your spider in your dream. Well, I felt almost curious and excited to watch it — that same feeling that you get when you see something so ugly and disgusting, so unimaginable that it’s difficult to take your eyes off it. Recently I’ve been constantly applying everything to my mental state of depression. So what can this dream say about it then? That I’m still so scared of what I am going through or I already passed a milestone and now I’m looking at my life situation more with curiosity and this weird twisted, almost gambling-like interest to see what this whole experience finally brings?

What differs that four-year-old girl teasing nurses in such a nonchalant way adoring her mum to bits from a thirty-four year old woman with a broken heart (by various people, including that same mum) I’m seeing now in the mirror? Probably the first one would cry over a scary dream of a black hairy spider while the other one is confident that rotten watermelons and their yellow mash is not the scariest thing that can happen to her. Rotten hearts and ill-minded people are.

IV

When did I slip into this? Into becoming someone I am not?

Did I make myself believe that this is something that I want from my life? Or should I say ‘in’ my life — the difference is massive, though it doesn’t seem that way. I’ve always dreamt of far off lands — do you remember, Sasha? We used to dream it together. Our shared dream was to become archeologists, the unthinkable thought that we cherished and that we lost along the way. Did you lose it before you passed away or much earlier than that?

You know, for many years after your death I kept on seeing you in people or shapes on the streets wherever I went. For over ten years I didn’t think of you as someone who died, and I think I still don’t. So maybe it was you when I thought I saw you and then immediately remembered that you are no longer in this world? Because you must be still somewhere here, mustn’t you? I don’t believe that you are gone.

Sometimes I wonder if you can see me and what my life has happened to be. What would you say of it if we met, let’s say tomorrow, for a coffee or just a walk? What would you look like now, I can’t stop thinking of that. Sometimes it happens, I see a young woman who has something of your eyes or the shape of your face and I tell myself or even Ben — this is what my Sasha could look like. And maybe this is what you actually look like — somewhere there, where I can’t see and where you are still breathing.

What is death? There are way too many questions in this piece, and that’s not a sign of a good writer, they say. But who are they to understand what someone goes through when they have lost a piece of something so precious that they can’t even comprehend the loss themselves?

Life is about losses. It will take me over ten more years after your death to understand that. I lose a piece of me with every decision I make and even every gain and victory in life because I come to understand that human capacity is unthinkable, as well as the capacity of the world. I could have been that, but have become this. I could have gone there, but stayed here. I could have met someone else and not fell in love with the man I am married to and have a different child to the one I have now. As unimaginable as this thought is, maybe that is the reason why I always feel a bit sad and as if in a constant shortage of something — because I know that there are paths of my life that I will never see and live, a billion lost opportunities though I never even knew they were possible?

Give me a sign, tell me you are proud of me. Tell me I am on the right way and please tell me you miss me as much as I miss you. My beautiful friend, my fire in the land of snow where we were destined to find and lose each other.

V

The difficulty is to stay properly alive. Not that I want to die, but because the pain and suffering is too strong — not only of the pain itself but also of not living the life as I think I want. And again, I don’t know how I got here.

After giving birth to Max I entered the darkest period of my life, and there were many in my life though back at the time I didn’t comprehend them as that. My drive to live and faith in the world has always been way too strong to dwell on the bad and I have never contemplated the idea of arriving in such a strange place. I didn’t realise such places exist. My problem is that I try to explain my experiences both with deep philosophical thinking and really basic reasoning like lack of sleep, or poor diet, for example.

The sun is shining now and it feels so much better than when it doesn’t. That day of giving birth I got broken. They broke me and something cracked inside. At least my wrists did.

It is very difficult to explain to anyone what it feels like — to have wrist pains somehow weirdly connected to the thoughts of cutting them — it is like the thought initiates the sensation, or sensation initiates the thought, but it is always one way or another. Why is that? I remember one of the first times it happened — we returned back home from the hospital and I went to Max’s crib to pick him up and when I did, I felt it — a burning, painful sensation in my wrists like I was scared to touch and hold my son. Like I was so scared because I knew — I am not good enough to do this and I will have to pretend that I am. That was three years ago or over 1200 days. How can I share this experience with anyone who is not me and tell them what it feels like to live with this every single day?

How much energy and strength it takes, how much stamina not to follow this obsessive thought to react to my brain games. I hope one day I will be free from this. Free again, though I didn’t realise I was until I got imprisoned. How much sympathy for everyone around this experience brought to me is hard to measure. Sympathy but also ruthlessness — in fact these things are of the same nature. I can’t really explain how now, but I will get back to this later.

I am falling into the depths of the universe, and you might think I am off my rails and well I might as well be. But being on my rails is far more liberating than being on yours no matter how much you want me to be there so we can be friends, and here I am thinking of Nitzsche and his ‘those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who couldn’t hear the music’. What music do you hear every day? Is that the same as music you’d choose to dance to? What is life, really. What is it.

VI

The sound of the washing machine calms me down. I find these little rituals of the domestic household very calming and somehow cozy, maybe because they make me feel like there is life in the house I am living in. There is movement. Because I cannot stand calmness and quietness, no matter how tired I get. When I find myself somewhere in the middle of nowhere, say a forest or a village and I have to fall asleep to the noise of nothing I feel nothing but distress — my head feels as if it’s poured in with lead as we say in Russia and I can’t rest in what is supposed to be a peaceful setting. In the beginning of the twenty-first century we are all taught that calmness of mind and absence of thoughts is some kind of way to deep wisdom and the road to enjoying life. But is it really, I keep asking myself this question for a while — what if I calm down surrounded by noises and people, cars honking and sounds of aliveness, the sound of movement in this nothing but grandiose universe, filled with silence. So many of us for as long as I know try to avoid life on earth in the earthiest way possible by ‘meditating’ and practicing various exercises to feel closer to where we all apparently came from. I seriously doubt that that’s what we were given our lives to be. But you don’t have to agree with me.

I remember once in the middle of the winter we just went out for a short walk that turned out to be quite a long one in the end — me, Ben and Max. We entered a grocery store called ‘Magnolia’ — I can’t help but think of the eponymous movie by Paul Thomas Anderson every time I see one of the stores of this chain — to get a coffee or something. And as soon as I got my cup I went out and due to the fact there were no benches around I just leaned on the wall and slowly slid down to sit as homeless people do and then it struck me. Something inside just clicked and I felt for a split second what homeless people might feel sometimes, as long as they don’t freeze or starve. The noises and lights of the surroundings — of cars, of street lamps, of people chattering on their phones — felt almost like amniotic liquid of a mother’s womb where I felt cocooned and so safe but at the same time exposed to the world around me. That shell was there, the shell that we lose once we are out here. Maybe I felt that way because all the noises and lights were blurred into one at that moment and by sitting down there I felt like a small someone — it is actually nice to feel small and invisible in the world where everybody is trying to be bigger than themselves and therefore build up their everything to an unmanageable size and then suffer from it. Maybe fear and knowing one’s place is not such a bad thing in the end, despite that it has always been shamed and laughed upon.

So I did it. This week I sent the letter of complaint to the State Health Department — the letter that we prepared together with the lawyer. The letter that is supposed to show, firstly to myself, that it wasn’t all my fault that I couldn’t handle the birth of my son. Most probably it wasn’t my fault at all, but it will take me much more time to accept that and be at peace with the fact. I was shamed into being fearful and cowardly in my labour, but if anything I was too brave and again, as many times before, blind to who I really am and what I am capable of. I am only learning to understand the limits of myself, because, trust me, we are limited in many ways — please try to avoid anyone who tells you the opposite. Knowing your limits is the key to freedom. But again, you don’t have to agree with me.

It’s snowing outside. That day I was sitting down leaning against the wall of ‘Magnolia’, it was snowing too. Though it was December back then and now it is April. You know, they say that many homeless people love what they do and will never shift to living back to ‘normal’ no matter how much comfort of typical human life might be offered to them. Freedom is what makes them ‘addicted’ to nomadic life. Freedom to be free. Sit with this one for a while, as it’s not that easy to comprehend straight away.

Funnily enough, the flower of Magnolia is believed to have existed from the beginning of time and among other things it symbolises longevity and perseverance, something one might be gifted with for choosing their own definition of freedom. Even if it feels ‘small’ and worthless to the world around you.

VII

I am suffocating and I do not understand why. I cannot hide it — I am scared of what the world is turning into, of all the truths that have been hiding there for years and I am shivering at the thought of my future. I am thinking of you, my son. You brought the sense of eternity, but also the reality of fatality into my life. And again I don’t understand why. They said it would be the most joyous experience in my life, but I can’t agree with this. And I would like to say it out loud — I am scared of being your mother, I am scared of being so close to you, being the essence and the source of your being, of your life. Who am I to decide to bring you into this world? But I understand it too late and I am scared-scared-scared of it and I pray, I hope I will get better at this. Better at being braver to hold your hand and walk with you through this world.

I love you. These words are just pouring out of me. The last time I was here writing these pages on the 21st of April — almost three months ago. And today I felt this urge to burst it all out of me again, this inexplicable grief that hasn’t shaped into anything until I started typing and probably figured out that the nature of my grief is being away from you, because if not, then why would I be writing these words right now?

I am away from you for so long — it’s been three days and there will be a few more and now I understand what being truly empty and lonely feels like. I am away from you and this is the loneliest I’ve ever been. When I realised it on my first night here I was scared at the thought of feeling this when you grow up and inevitably leave me. Is this what they feel when children leave, those adults? Is this why these bonds turn into ugly dependencies and blind disabilities of letting them go? This is so much bigger than something you explain to someone or put into words. I am aching, my body wants ro run.

Funnily enough (or not), I am now in Kalmykia, in the region of Russia surrounded and built on a steppe — vast, immeasurable and…lonely. Does it add to how I feel? I am here to work on a film about a mother who lost her son. I am a potential casting for the main role…and words run out. I am scared to say what can be said here, so I leave it at this.

Does the director of the film Ira know that this steppe is almost a perfect illustration and a metaphor for the solitude of that mother? The land of emptiness and eternity, the land of grief and stillness. The land that every mother carries inside — to various degrees, from 0,1, to eternity like the character of the film Lena. Even if you live till you are a hundred years old, we are so scared of losing you. We do not choose it, rather it inhabits us once you are born, our children, our little miracles and little mirrors. I feel that now, being away from you Maxime, is the first time I fully recognise and accept myself as your mother.

VIII

Poverty.

Our world has drowned in poverty.

We are drowning every day by digging holes for ourselves, holes in ourselves and each other by offering money loans with the highest interest to the poor who will never be able to pay it back and stay healthy, happy, and sane. By walking past the homeless, shrinking in disgust, we are shrinking our fears of being there where they are and our courage to come closer and ask — how are you hanging in there?

We are scared of the answers. We are taught to help but to mind our own business. Helping became a click on a smartphone — just like everything — paying, talking, learning, loving. Dare to unclick the world and come out there to see with your eyes again, not with your camera. Do you think we will have cameras in our eyes sooner than we expect?

I am myself a big fan of videos. I love that perspective on life that only a lense can give. It gives me an opportunity not to live life but to see it, to become a still spectator rather than an active participant and I think it is a wonderful opportunity we’ve had for the last century. Before, life could have only been imagined by reading writers’ work and looking at the illustrations of life made by painters and other visual artists. But as soon as photography and video arrived we were enabled to actually see life. Do you know what I mean? But it seems to me that the further we go the more we might change one for another — living for seeing and won’t even notice it. Sometimes I fall into thinking this all to be a grand plan of our governments or those sitting above these talking heads and clowns as all politicians undoubtedly are.

I can’t help but start finding sense in conspiracies. Maybe it is a sign of getting older and not being able to let go of the things the way I am used to them.

My writing is woven with melancholy.

Elista and its unbearable heat melts me and I am thankful for that.

I take it as a gift to stop my racing mind and let myself be.

IX

I’m standing in front of an old house that used to be a windmill and now my new therapist lives here. Behind me is the road with cars going left and right fast, loud, dangerous. In front of me is a tranquil view of hills. The day is grey, but fresh. As usual I woke up in a good mood and I am scared knowing that the mood will start going down soon. Some time in the afternoon, in the most inconvenient time. That’s what depression and mental health problems happened to be to me — high in the morning, low in the afternoon, and hopefully quite ok and cheerful by the end of the day. If I’m lucky. Over the four years of me living with this I have had numerous hypotheses of why exactly I’ve been having this pattern and I’ve come to a conclusion that can easily be backed up by both traditional and non-traditional healers and therapists — Max was born at 17:02, I myself was born at 18:15. So double trauma — my birth of Max was morbid, my own birth was not much better. Being really late, just like my son, I didn’t even breathe when I was born so I had to be taken to a special care unit for several days. My mum told me — my silence silenced her, the revelation she felt after hearing me cry after a few of a midwife’s taps on my little body was everything.

That’s what I learnt and that’s what real growing up happened to be to me — coming to terms with the fact that sadness and joy, beauty and fear, peace and terror always come together in life, inevitably, every moment of it.

Who am I to tell someone to quit drinking? Who am I to say that their relationship is toxic or the world they live in is profoundly wrong?

Yesterday I was in Shropshire. Today I’m overlooking the roofs of posh houses in Kensington in central London. The Polish guy we met last night on the street pierced me right into the heart, again. Like all others. He said he was raising money to get a room for ninety pounds and he had already managed to save seventy. Ninety pounds it is what I’m thinking — per night? Per week? Per month?

Having a billion dollars in your bank account should become a crime, Ben tells me over breakfast. I tell him if we see this guy again today I’ll give him ten pounds instead of one and a half we donated last night. I wish I could give him more I swear. I would have given him two hundred, three, even a thousand. If only I had the opportunity. I think of Keanu Reeves and all the stories I read about him — his generosity, his lack of greed, his understanding as it seems of real values in life. His simple comprehension that it is simply ridiculous to be paid millions of dollars for a role in a film when all other crew members get paid thousands times less. Who created this system and why is it still functioning? Common opinion is that Keanu’s grief after having a stillborn child, then losing his wife and later sister didn’t make him tougher and more sinister. But how could it? His heart being probably already soft and sensitive softened up even more and created this inevitable ability for him to notice and feel things that stay unnoticeable when you have dollar signs in your eyes more than anything else.

Andrew was the same. I didn’t know him very well in real life but I got a grip of what kind of person he was through Ben’s telling me about him. Those things I heard about him at his funeral alertedly reminded me of myself — always seeing grief in others, talking to the homeless, sharing his money with them thinking they definitely deserve it more. Specialists might call it ‘depressive state of mind’ as it is something to change and yes, it is something to change and maybe Andrew then could have been still alive. But at the same time I find it difficult to have any other kind of mindset when what we experience everyday is unbearable inequality, inhumane suffering and tons of empty houses as well as tons of homeless on the street. I cannot come to terms with it and I wish one day I will be able to do something about all this.

His suicide triggered my own mental state and my own reflections about life and death, about the world and people around me. Every day the darkness of the loss switches to the lightness of the person he was and still is. It is true what it says in that famous speech about wearing sunscreen: ‘The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blindside you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday’.

X

The land with no hope — that’s what it feels to me. I get it now. Intuitively it feels like no one really wants anything, or aspire to become anything. It’s like a swamp with no movement, everything is stocked up inside, and everything is rotting. So weird — I look at young guys but see old people — they already know how to live, they don’t question their ways, and maybe that is what triggers me. It is stagnated, strangely refusing to change its ways. I might be totally wrong, but that’s what I feel. And my feeling is what I own without owing anything to anyone. Neither excuse or explanation.

I get overwhelmed with emotions and experiences daily. Maybe that is why I’m so tired all the time? The PTSD I had after giving birth to Max was a severe one. I mean it still is a severe one. And now I know how it can suck all the energy out of me. I’m tired every day — yawning and waiting for the day to end so I can be in bed again. I enjoy a lot of things I do during the day, often I even get very energetic and excited, but overall the place of my most comfort now is a bed. The most comfortable of them is the bed of my mother-in-law that I just left after sleeping in it for almost a month. I’m a Taurus after all — high quality bed linen and comfortable pillows are something that I find really important. So does she, she told me once. Therefore she doesn’t save money on mattresses and I’m a hundred percent on her side on this.

I am looking out of the window and seeing the beautiful English landscape but what stands in front of me is Jane, in her pink hoodie — a seventy-year-old woman in a hoodie, imagine! Crying as we leave the train station in a one carriage train. If not for the knowledge I would have never given her that age. Years of healthy eating and being a ballet teacher, as well as her discipline and persistance do their job. In many ways I admire this woman, in other ways I have lots of questions to her that I will probably never dare ask, though I’m trying to get better at it as I grow older.

I think of Nigel, my father-in-law. And the silent exchange between him and Ben — both holding their lips together not looking at what disappoints them — our goodbyes today in this case — only to find the way for their tears in the company of those whom they share most of it all — me and Jane, I suppose.

We are on our way to London from where we fly back to Russia. So much moving, so little stability. I used to think that this is what I need, though recently I feel that finding a stable place that I can finally call my home is what I need. I want to put all the rugs and carpets around that I desperately want to buy with all the money that I know I will earn.

I definitely will not be miserly when it comes to buying bed linen — just like my mother-in-law — good quality, getting warm when in contact with my body and staying cold where little empty spaces form in the bed. Just like humans warming up against each other and staying colder in places where they are alone.

I think of Jim, the farmer next door. He fell out with his mother for various reasons and I ponder my own relationship with my son. Where will we be when I’m ninety-five and he’s just over sixty? I don’t even want to think about it. I lay my head on Ben’s shoulder. He seems better now. Such an Englishman.

XI

I’m watching you stroking your head, your arm moving up and down, left and right as I’m deciding to check your reflection in the mirror — I see your eyes closing, you’re obviously really tired or on something, that takes you to oblivion incompatible with our lives.

For a split second the burning feeling of desperate remorse takes over my brain — I don’t know how indebted you are, and how many hours you’ve already had to work today to make ends meet. When was your last piece of meat or when did you take your kids out to a beach even though you live within touching distance of the sea. My heart aches for you, it really does. But I learn to care for myself, I learn to protect my boundaries, so my son and myself can be protected.

No, I really do not believe in the modern pro-self agenda — think only of oneself, take care of your life, feel sorry for no one, pity is only for losers. Is it really?

They tell me it’s their choice to choose to live this life. But is it? Think of generation after generation after generation of those born into extreme disadvantage — no access to education, not even educated enough to think that education can be an option. Tough cultural traditions, blind religious beliefs — fuck man, who are we kidding? Why am I the one writing and thinking this? Why not you, a gentleman whose pocket has never been empty?

I struggle to comprehend this side of the world. Violent, cruel, grotesque, ridiculous, with brains as thick as a plank. Or sick, not thick.

My stupid writing isn’t gonna change anything — you probably laugh at me.

But at least think of the driver who almost killed himself and us today because he was falling asleep at 11 something pm while driving.

And then think of those who shout meaningless political slogans while people struggle to even exist or those promoting capitalism and themselves. Are you one of them?

I’m not sure you understand me or my questions. Neither do I care, really.