25. LOST SOUL

ATTENTION PLEASE! THIS CHAPTER IS A CONTINUATION OF THE PREVIOUS AND CONTAINS EVEN MORE TRAGIC THOUGHTS.

Facts take place in October, 2017. During that time, I used to spend hours locking myself at home, playing video games, whereas I also started writing my book. Until then, I had written a few books, however they mostly consisted of novels and some of them were on the fantasy/sci-fi genre. The rest of them were something like a psychobiography, however I always used to write in a third-person narration and the heroines seemed like they were in a great distance from me. This means that the facts were not explicitly described and didn't show exactly my own feelings, but they seemed to be more like a fictional story, because I was too afraid to reveal myself. At the meantime, I had also promised Johanna that we would start composing the following album, but the truth was that this wasn't in my own priorities now. What is more, I didn't want to see Johanna at all. If we met, she would understand that something is terribly wrong. And I didn't want to talk about anything to anybody. About anything at all. I kept on having this empty look, just like in the beginning, until I myself ended up being the emptiness. I didn't dare even saying that I almost tried to commit suicide and that a phonecall prevented me from doing this fatal action.

Thus, I left myself (if this thing that I had can ever be called self) become a victim of circumstances, without realising what was happening. However deep inside we know, when something is wrong, and we have to somehow get this out. As I left myself be drifted apart by the situations, I also let my mind tell me what it really wanted me to write about. Not because I wanted to make money, but because I wanted to write anything I was feeling, which had to turn into a good story. So, I started writing about a girl (what else?), who lives with her younger sister in a town. Their mother is a drug addict and the second daughter was conceived after her mother was raped. Her first daughter was conceived by a man, who is to blame for the mother's addiction in drugs and when she got pregnant, he abandoned her. This mother has neglected both children, exactly because she's a drug addict and has no sense of reality. So these girls replace their mother's abscence by having each other.

The eldest daughter is 8 years old and the youngest 4. As it is obvious, both girls have created a completely wonderful universe in their heads, because they are children and don't understand deeper things. However as time goes by, the eldest daughter starts to suspect that serious things are happening. And in the end, in the book I present her in an older age, where she doesn't have anything anymore, neither a face, nor dreams, but she's just a victim of circumstances. That means that she lives everything that I was living and indeed I'm writing about my own opinions and feelings in the book. But there's something else I also do and this is a trademark of my writing style and by that I mean that I interchange the narrators: that means that I may use simultaneously omniscient narration as well as internal focalisation (I would rarely write in the first-person, because it seemed to me completely hypocritical and dishonest to write me, about something you're not in real life, let alone writing me, when you have no self anymore). However, when I used an omniscient narration, it seemed like people liked and felt empathy towards the girl, showing how good-hearted she was deep inside, no matter if she had a cruel past. However, when I would use internal focalisation (if I can call it like that), one would expect that they would read about the girl's feelings. But what I was eventually doing was swearing (as a narrator) this girl. Truly, in this book I was swearing as much as I had never sworn in my whole life. I bared her, abased her, raped her personality.....and I wasn't feeling any shame against it, because I believed she was only worth of getting sworn at. All my heroines were only worth of getting sworn at and in the end they should die, because they were bitches and shouldn't be even born.

During that time, Dina came from Heidelberg to my place, because she wanted to look after me, so I hosted her. I was always leaving the notebook, where I was writing my stories, next to my PlayStation. In general, Dina was sleeping longer than me, so I used to play video games until she would wake up. One morning, when she woke up, she saw me playing, thus I left the game, made some coffee and when we sat in the backyard, Dina told me:

"Last night I stole your story, while you were sleeping and I started reading it".

I was left speechless for a while, because it is common knowledge that my perfectionism didn't allow me let others touch anything created by me, when it's incomplete.

"It's a total rubbish thing, isn't it?" I said, as my perfect self-esteem started to load.

"What are you telling me, idiot?", she exclaimed. "It's only that after reading your books, I started to ask myself several questions".

"Then you can ask me", I said drinking a little bit of my morning coffee.

"Why do you hate your heroines so much?"

My face turned pale.

"What did you say?", I asked in a freezing tone.

"Ingrid, you keep on swearing at them and in the end you make them kill themselves. Why? Why do you hate them? What are they to blame for?"

I beckoned positively. "That's what they're worth of. Death! Because they should be ashamed of themselves".

She burst out laughing: "Hey, did you just go mad? You are talking about a story and non-existent figures. How are they worth of dying, as long as they're fictional persons?".

"For me they're not. Because they're evil and they know! Their soul is black and they are full of wickedness"

"Is there anyone with a pure soul, or anyway someone who is a good person?"

"Of course", I replied. "Children are not wicked, because hope lives inside them...."

"When the child dies, every hope is lost too", Dina said, repeating a sentence from my book.

"Exactly", I said smiling. "And what does this mean?"

Dina shrugged her shoulders.

"It's very simple", I said. "Children in my stories are innocent and hold their hopes high for their future. But as soon as they grow up, they realise how cynical this world is, they lose their own self, and they become one with the masses, stopping to feel empathy towards one another and they instead step on people, in order to gain success. This means the death of hope".

"What about you? What's your position in all that?"

I laughed sarcastically.

"You'll find me in the heart of chaos and hell".

None of us said a single thing for a while and we were silently drinking our coffees. However, like it or not, you can't avoid Dina, when she realises that something is wrong with you.

"Ingrid, you're not fine at all and I don't mean anything evil against you".

"Have I ever told you that I'm feeling ok?", I said.

"Ingrid, why did you rip all the mirrors in your house?"

"Oh, why??! Because I don't have any lust to keep on seeing my freaking face all the time".

I felt my whole body being once again full of rage.

"Who am I, Dina? What am I at all?"

"This is something that YOU only know".

"No, I don't know anything. I only know that I can see nothing more in the mirror than an emptiness. I have neither a face nor an identity. When I pass by people in the street I can hear them whispering to one another Here's the organist, here's the keyboardist, here's the pianist, here's the storyteller. Nobody remembers this fucking name, Ingrid, at all. What am I after all, if I have no self?".

I started to fill with tears again. I stood up and rushed to the bathroom crying. Everything was going to hell and I was in despair. I didn't know anything anymore. I don't know if you can understand this, but all of us know how to identify ourselves in a way; we do have an identity. I am not able to say that I just had some low self-esteem issues -- I mean that I wish it were only about self-esteem, because then we would be able to talk about a self, an image, and judge it. I had no self, no face. I was nothing but a living body, without a consciousness. And all this was so freaking.

I walked out of the bathroom and Dina hugged me and told me: "I'm so sorry for telling you such harsh things. I didn't want you to feel so bad".

"This is all too much for me", I managed to say, without bursting again into tears. "I can't bear this".

Letting my lost self roam freely, as I said, I let things turn out on their own, hoping that the passing of the time would improve the situation. I went on with my studies: Literature and Linguistics. So, I let other treat me as they liked and I completely sold myself out. If I wanted to go to parties, I would go, if I wanted to get so wasted until I had passed out, I would be drinking, if I wanted to bring home a different guy every night, I would do it. This means that I was doing anything that would come down in my head, so that I wouldn't be thinking about my macabre life.

At Christmas, 2017, I fled to Norway to spend the holiday with my family. I wanted to go there, not only because I wanted to see my folks, but because I also missed all that. Every time I was going back in Kirkenes, I was feeling that I had found my old self back, little Ingrid, this carefree child that I had left behind years ago. I don't mean -and do not let me be misunderstood- that I wanted to return to my childhood days. Heavens, no! I just needed back this beautiful and happy life that I'd lost. When my mum saw me, she was somehow taken aback. Not because my hair had this black colour, with blonde and red highlights, as if I were Germany's flag. She asked me: "Are you leading an unhealthy life?"

I felt ashamed and replied to her: "Oh, you know how it is, when you're busy all day long".

Even though I had a wonderful time and I was close to my family, as always, silence was too obvious. And this silence was caused because of me. I was concealing things, facts, feelings and thoughts. I avoided discussing with my folks about deeper stuff. I didn't want anybody to learn that I didn't have a face anymore. I was ashamed of my parents and my siblings. I was lost in space, without a name, but the others could see and feel it. They were no fools. However they also decided to move with my own ways --to follow the ways of silence. I felt I would destroy my family.

At some point, Johanna asked me: "Are you flirting with anyone?". On the tip of my tongue was the phrase With many  guys every night, but I preferred not to say anything. I wouldn't tell my sister that I had become such a perverted person and such a whore. Anyway the fact that I was in Norway now had given me hopes. Whatsoever, I had written in my book that when the child dies, every hope is lost too. So, as long as I could get child-like feelings, I could still be full of hope. But then, I went back to Ireland, where Dina, Lydia and Lulu came along with me, as we would start composing our fifth album.

I remember some evening, when I was strolling along with Dina near the river.

"You said you were happy in Kirkenes", she told me.

"I was, indeed. Because I relived moments that I felt I would never experience again. I felt so fortunate", I said in a smile. And then I added: "And now I'm back in this chaos to travel back and forth from one place to another".

"Are you talking about the tours?"

"No, not that. At least then we have our crazy company with us and we have a good time. I mean travelling back and forth from Norway to Ireland and vice versa".

"But why don't you choose one place to live?", she asked.

I laughed sarcastically. "Hey, I'm not ok. Madness is boiling in my blood".

"We all know. You're an artist anyway. But, please tell me".

"Can I confess something to you? When I live permanently in Norway, I feel like living in a routine. I hate routines more than anything and everyday I want to do something totally different than the previous day. But when I travel back and forth from Norway to Ireland, I feel so pressured and that I live in a chaotic situation and that I can't find my own balance".

"You have to find your own home, then. This place that you can call your home. Because, youngster, I'm afraid that you are homeless at the moment".

Dina was right. I ripped all the mirrors, because I was feeling that I was seeing the profile of a homeless person in my face. Now everybody knew and could see what I had become. I remembered my own father, when he took us and we moved to Cefalonia, because he wanted to find his inner balance. Back then, I used to make fun of him and I called these things psychobabbles. But then I was young and couldn't understand how loud your soul can scream in severe pain, how many nightmares you may dream of at night, because of the turmoil you're going through. Living without being alive. Being faceless and reactionless. And even in nightmares dreaming of macabre incidents, about families being wiped out, that your whole family is getting raped or massacred and you can do nothing else but just watch the whole thing, as if it were a cinema show. A cinema soul. This is what I was: Cinema Soul, as my friends used to call me. And I never asked myself: Why this nickname?

And the worse was that I couldn't live any real love. I could feel many men's passion, but nobody ever fell in love with me, apart from Josh. I would never find any man just like Josh. I had an opportunity in my life and I just let it slip from my fingers. Men wanted me only to say that they seduced Alexandria's virtuosa, the storyteller, the musician, anyway this cute redhead, who remains selfless and nameless.

I once felt like an evergreen tree, constantly blooming

Now I've been only naked in winter's frost.