It’s one of these moments again. I’ve lost count of how often this has already happened but sometimes it feels as if the last months have only been about this.

Rekha: “I can’t go on like this. I have nothing more to say to you and most of the time I only hurt you.”

Derek: “Do you really want it to end?”

I want and I don’t want. Time seems to put a solid layer on relationships, either between friends or lovers. Depending on the circumstances you can break out of them though, especially if things don’t work out anymore.

Sometimes I think this is the case. But then I think of all the good things in our friendship and I know I can’t quit. The self-incrimination starts, when I think of his uses to me. He listens, he cares, he helps and a good connection to him would be practical when I move to the UK. I don’t think that seeing a friend as a subject of use is a good thing though and once again the thoughts of me being a bad person start again.

Whenever he tells me that he will still be my friend and that he can cope with the way I am, I don’t know what to think. If I look at my ever same worry about him not being able to cope with me, I only start to think badly about it all.

Maybe he pretends to himself that he can cope, while deep in his heart he’s slowly being destroyed?

Maybe he keeps up this picture just to make me feel better?

What this concerns…did I really ever trust him?

I know it isn’t true…it can’t be true! So where do these thoughts come from? I remember things that may have caused me to think like this…

I had two friends I got along with greatly. One day I came to visit them and one of my friends walked away from me. I asked the other what was wrong and she told me that the girl despised me and had just pretended to be my friend. Another time I had a friend who always played tricks on me and mocked me. This seems to have left traces.

There must be a difference between trusting a person enough to tell them certain things and trusting the person not to betray you or leave you or torture you. I guess that I never learnt the second one completely, which is why I keep thinking nobody could cope with me.

Another possibility is that I simply don’t believe my luck. Also I’m flustered about the attention and love I’m receiving. I had over-explored the boundaries and yet the friendship went on. It’s close to a miracle for me that there’s a person patient enough to keep telling me good things and forgiving me so often.

I don’t know how I could learn to trust a person completely. As for Derek…I don’t know what is going to happen. I received some messages from him that really made me sad. I know I wouldn’t lose him but it seems as if some threads of our bond have ripped apart.
 

Star
You are my star shining so bright
And I look out for you each and every night
I dream of you becoming a girl
A girl so fair and light
But you don’t just belong to me
And it wouldn’t be my right.

One day the clouds came up
And every night was dark.
I prayed that they would go away
So I might see your spark.
But you stayed covered oh so long
And I felt worse all time.

My hope had almost faded
Since you seemed forever gone
But God had heard my prayers
And decided I was worth someone
He made the clouds go all away
And you were there to greet me
Now I can see you once again
And dream of you to meet me.

Untitled
Where do all these tears come from,
Running down your face?
Can’t you show a little smile
And display your eternal grace?
Why do you run into your personal hell,
When you know it’s just so mad?
Please look at me and realize it’s making me really sad.
Now let me take you by the hand
And show you what life can be.
Witnessing it’s happy times your demons will all flee.

Split mind
One says wrong, one says right.
Don’t know where to start the fight.
Cannot run, cannot hide.
Please Oh God come to my side.
Help me, guide me, tell me who I am.
I want to feel normal, once again.

That’s at least how it has been for me. Sometimes I can’t really see this as something good though, because if I fall into depression again it just seems like happiness can’t hold on either.

The last months have been so…mad. I had small ups and big downs; I argued like hell with André, I fell out with Derek. I was so aggressive, upset, got everything wrong and starting to think in so destructive ways that everything might have just went down.

André…I made a big mistake there. I expected too much, I wanted too much. I tried to change him not only because of the sake of changing but also because I didn’t want him like that. I never realized that he was happy as he was, as unbelievable as it seemed to me. Only Derek could make this clear to me but before I was able to see clearly, I even fell out with him.

I had wanted Derek’s opinion about André and I had wanted to see his reactions to him and interactions with him. Another big mistake. Derek, as good with people as he is, got along well with André and didn’t really spot anything problematic. But one thing Derek said made me so barking mad first and then I also felt like they were turning against me. I quit the conversation a bit later but I couldn’t forget what I had read.

Derek had said that everyone had their own opinion and that should be respected. But he had always wanted to change me and now it looked like he had gone onto André’s side. This really made me upset, although nothing was as I had thought. Also I was upset with myself, the way I had been in this situation, the point that I couldn’t accept anything and started to fight instead and so much more.

That night I couldn’t go to sleep. I was so fierce with anger…I pushed my fingernails into my palms, I screamed more or less soundlessly, I cried very angry and desperate tears and I breathed heavily like a raging bull. In the end I had to call Derek and get back onto the computer. We talked it over and he got things clear for me but it didn’t help much.

I told André I would stop talking for a while and turned away from any hope for improve.

It was at that point that I felt as ill-minded as never before and although I was afraid and just found thinking about it horrible, I made an appointment with a psychiatrist for a test.

Weeks passed on in that very depressive mood. At some point I added Robbert, an acquaintance from Guild Wars to my contacts because we wanted to do some stuff together in the game. We started to talk really mundane stuff but exchanged pictures quite early. From the looks he wasn’t exactly my type but maybe the photo wasn’t that good either. After the failure with André I wasn’t really fond on looking for someone else, so talking to Robbert just felt like talking to a friend.

It was when he mentioned poetry that I got interested. He sent me his stuff and I was really amazed. From then on we talked almost every day, sharing quite a lot of rather private things with each other. I feel a lot better with him, maybe exactly because I don’t have any “plans” with him so far. He makes me laugh and smile again and now, just a few days before the doctor’s appointment all my depressions are gone. Maybe he is the one I waited for, the one who by strange ways can help me?... 

In the last few months I was really longing for a break from work. Since May I had known of my next holiday and the closer it came, the less I looked forward to work. The last two months or so also haven’t been a busy time at work, since most people had made their holiday plans already.

We had already been told before that we soon might have to help other service lines as well. Our supervisor had been so nice to let us do this as less as possible but with things getting worse and worse in one particular service, he had no other choice than to tell us to help out there. None of us really likes working in the service line for Germans. The work in itself is totally different than the service line for English. It has to go faster, the people are a lot more different and it happens more often that they get upset.

Having to cover the German service line quite often in the last two weeks or so, I was sort of getting used to it although it still sometimes happened that I almost slipped into English terms or was getting annoyed about customers. But as long as the system worked, it was bearable.

There is one main disadvantage in our help for the German service line though: We can’t book journeys because we haven’t been trained in the necessary programme. This disadvantage was leading to another problem, which totally upset me on Thursday.

I had to help the German service line all day and almost every time I wanted to put a customer through to the people in charge of booking the other lines were all occupied. After the customer had spent minutes in the queue and then had his information provided by me, I didn’t find it a nice thing to tell him that he had to call the same number again in a few minutes, queue up again and if he was really “lucky” the offer I had just quoted would be gone by then. This was making me really upset because I didn’t want to be fired at by the customer for something that wasn’t my fault and I couldn’t help myself but think like the customer and curse at my employer.

I was making quite a riot, not being able to hold back my anger on a day where everything had gone pretty bad already. I said that I was going to quit if things went on like this and at that moment I really meant it. Obviously this caused some trouble, since the team leader in charge wrote a message to my supervisor, who immediately took me out for a very serious conversation on the next day.

He was very disappointed with my behaviour and the fact that I wasn’t able to accept things as they were, think like an employee of Deutsche Bahn and do my job. He told me about the bad situation within this franchise of the company and that people like us were really needed. I said that our help didn’t make much sense other than getting the queue numbers down, because we couldn’t do bookings. And just getting queue numbers down that will appear again in a moment because we have to send the customer back into the queue for getting to a consultant who can book it for them, is like hiding things away that will still be there. This doesn’t make much sense to me.

So, I made the suggestion that we should learn booking with the other system as well but we weren’t finished there. Of course he had to go down to personal things as well. He said that he didn’t want to lose me as a worker, that he would finish as well if I would finish and that he knew I was capable of doing all kinds of things because I had already proofed so. He also mentioned that others of the team had clearly pointed out how much I had changed for the better since the beginning.

This was making me really sad. I mean, I was sort of flattered and amazed but I definitely didn’t say: “Your belief strengthens mine!” I don’t think that this could ever happen, because I’m a hopeless case. My social workers have believed in me and it didn’t change a thing, Derek has believed in me and although there has been a change I still slip back into old habits and old patterns of thinking, my supervisor has believed in me and called me a worthwhile employee long before and I still don’t believe him.

The main thing is that I still don’t believe in myself and the things I’m capable of doing. And the fact that things don’t seem to have changed only makes it worse. Why do I still get so uptight about the silliest things with Derek? Why do angry customers still make me more upset than they should do?

And so I look at the root of everything and I look at the examples of me still acting similar to how I used to act in earlier years and I see that in reality the root is still pretty much rotten and that it doesn’t look like there could be any help for it. This then leads me to think that I’m not capable of anything at all, no matter what I have already achieved.

Our childhood turns us into what we are later. This is the root and I’ve never been more lost than now to find a solution. How could I change patterns which have been woven more than a decade ago? How could I overwrite the things that have happened to me and start something new?

There are two layers of memory. One is to recollect things, see pictures of it in your mind, tell the stories and another is to have traces left in your behaviour and your whole being. It’s easy to dislodge the past by shutting the pictures out and stopping to tell the stories but the traces that have been left and that have made your being different, don’t seem to get erased that way.

If your being has been badly afflicted there might be no way at all to ever really change and this is the way I feel most of the time. I don’t have the ability to reflect the things I have achieved to myself, than really becoming aware again of the great thing I have done and telling myself that I’m worth something.

Instead I seem to love a “pack in” politic, where I just don’t want to go on and sink into the bitterness and self-destruction again. I still haven’t understood what in my development has caused me to do use this self-destructive thinking so much but the fact that it still happens makes me upset.

Looking at the conversation I’ve mentioned before there are several steps of being sad about the things my supervisor had said. First I was upset about his strictness (which was totally reasonable), then I was getting sad because he said all the good things about me that I didn’t find to be true, then I was getting more sad because I couldn’t believe him and then I was getting upset about myself being sad and not able to believe him.

I’m just turning myself further and further down and sometimes it actually feels as if I’m doing it on purpose, so that I have a reason to escape from everything and sink into my comfortable hole of bitterness and self-destruction again.

And the worst thing is that I can’t see any hope for redemption. If the support that I have had so far doesn’t really help, then what could actually help me?

Memory is the first thing to fade. – Larry

 When I talk with Derek about either historic things or things of my past it always seems to me, that he remembers things better than I do. Sometimes when he says: “You should know that!” I’m getting upset because first of all it’s not for him to decide what I should know but secondary he is mostly right with saying it, which makes me upset because there used to be so many things I knew.

Back in school my favourite subject was history because I found it very interesting and I could remember dates and facts very well. History was even some kind of hobby, as I was so much interested in ancient Egypt that I bought lots of books about it and read them in my free time. I also was more interested in politics and apart from listening to the news on the radio, I also watched the daily news on TV and there was even a favourite newspaper for me to read at times.

In the last school I went to these things started slowly to become less important. It was better and funnier to go out with my friends and it was more interesting to find out about the latest gossip, what the stars did and which style could look good on me. In comparison to some of my friends I still was a good student though. Dropping into unemployment for a very long time after finishing school wasn’t much of a help to my knowledge. It all disappeared quiet quickly and if there wouldn’t be someone who wanted me to use it in a job one day, then it will forever be unused and forgotten.

I remember one time within my placement where I had to re-access some of my knowledge back from school. I had to complete the graphs that showed the departments developments of the year, which meant that I had to remember how to do functions in Excel and how to add boxes to a Powerpoint slide. It took me a while but I figured it out in the end.

But having knowledge in general seems to have become less important for me. It might have been since I bought Guild Wars, that I read most of the news on the internet, that I didn’t buy any more newspapers and that I didn’t switch the TV on even for just 30 minutes to watch the news. Apart from Guild Wars knowledge about music has become more important with me creating my list of songs and establishing a server.

And how does my knowledge look like now? Well if I see two Fender electric guitars, I could say which one is a Stratocaster and which one is a Telecaster. I can tell you the date where “Dark side of the moon” came out. I know the names of all band members of U2. I know that the longest songs ever written come from Klaus Schulze. I know my way from Beacon’s Perch to Deldrimor War Camp out of mind. I know the prices and materials needed for certain armours. I know how to vanquish and how to map efficiently.

That’s really poor, isn’t it? But it is what matters to me now. Still when I talk with Derek a feeling of shame comes up. Haven’t I looked down in horror at the kids and young grown-ups who don’t know who Karl Marx or the first chancellor of Germany was? Haven’t I laughed about the dullness of the kids I lived with in the UK and who thought that Germany was part of their country? But haven’t I turned into something like them in a way?

Another thing I’m poor at is memory. There are so many things of his youth Derek remembers, even to the extend that he can talk about certain details. All I can see of my past is a grey world, in which blurred pictures appear at times. I recall no full memory of things, only small parts. A camel ride at the coast of India, the smell of a motor-riksha, the henna-painted feet of a bride, me and my parents walking past the wall a few days after it came down.  

I can understand why the memory of the bad things in my past is blurred but why is the good memory blurred as well? Have the things been so bad that they afflicted the other memory? Has that fall on my head caused more damage than I would have thought? Is something wrong with my memory? I don’t know it but I pity myself for having such a bad memory.

The only thing in memory I’m good at, is remembering places. If I have been to a place before I could find back to it again quiet easily because I remember things like the houses next to it, the look of the area, a tree or bush or a sign on the house itself. That is also why photos help me re-access memory. Unfortunately feelings connected with that memory get blurred out quickly as well.

And all that is left is emptiness…

Different countries accommodate different people. Just because a country isn't far away does­n't mean that there won't be huge cultural differences to meet. In fact even while travelling through your own country you will see people acting differently with each other. I'm not quite sure about the reasons but they are very multiplex.

In a general view, people from the North of Germany are considered to be the most frigid and rough. The further you move southward, the nicer people seem to be. Countries in the south are also on one of the top ranks for happy living. But one should never generalize people, be­cause although they take up a lot of how things go around them, they still have their own minds and beings.

For my area there are two important things to point out. Due to the separation of the wall, people of the west and people of the east still look at each other with mixed feelings. Most "Wessies" (Western people) think that "Ossies" (Eastern people) are really bad drivers and idiots. Most "Ossies" think that "Wessies" are rich and idiots as well. There is still a wall in people's heads. I however have known lots of people from the former East Germany and think that they are even better than some people I have known from the former West Germany.
 
This is one of the ways stereotypes about your own nation come into being. There are even worse stereotypes about Germans from the view of other countries. Two major parts have a lot to do with history. A lot of people still remember the National Socialist Regime, so they think of the Germans to be condescending to foreigners, dictatorial and that they all have blond hair and blue eyes. It's really about time that those things get out of people's heads. Germans are sometimes a bit careful with foreigners because they want to see if they can get along with them first, ever since we had a Dictatorship we have tried everything to never go that way again and the blond hair and blue eyes is something you'll more likely find in Swe­den.

Another historical part comes from the time of the Kaiserzeit and has to do with bringing up children in a very strict way, so that they would make decisions out of reason and not out of emotions. Also a lot of etiquette was important. Again these are parts that aren't of importance anymore. There might be still parents who fancy a strict way of upbringing but etiquette is something for rich and emotions aren't something that is suppressed anymore.

However just like Myths have facts or true parts to them, stereotypes have a truth to them as well. Germans drink a lot of beer because we make good beer, we eat a lot of wurst because we make good wurst and we are proud of their country if it comes to beer, wurst, football, inventions and cars. And just like every other country, Germany enjoys to meet their stereotypes on special occasions. At the festivals you will only see bratwurst and sauerkraut and people wearing Lederhosen. 

What brought me to think about stereotypes and differences? Well, when I came to the UK I wouldn't have thought that people and things could be so different there. Yes, the English use the Imperial measurement system, they drive on the left and they have a popular sense of humour but what could be different with them other than that? Well apart from the humour those points totally leave out the way the English act with people, what they do and what they like.

It is a bit difficult to describe what exactly is different about the way English treat each other. Obviously there are differences in the several parts of the country as well. In a German city you wouldn't see one person loudly making a comment/joke to a totally unknown other person because the other person wouldn't really appreciate it and so no one does it. But in the UK the other person sees the fun of it, smiles and maybe even gives a witty remark back. You have a lot more socialising going on due to the popularity of Pubs. Most of the people are warm, friendly and funny.

I think a lot of the ignorance and unfriendly behaviour I have taken up comes from the fact that I live in a huge city. People don't care about each other very much here, because there is no time and no reason for it. Nobody expects you to be nice, so hardly anybody is nice. I would like people to "give" me something in return for my friendly way and so I don't consider it worth doing such an effort if people don't say thank you or even look at you as if you were mad. And no, I can't do things like Jesus because I don't think that his "law" of giving without asking for something in return is easy to meet in this modern and rough time.

The differences between English and German were something that I especially noticed when I came back from my three month stay in the UK. It was a cultural shock and for the first time in my life I asked myself what was wrong with people in Berlin. But soon enough I adjusted to the climate again and was just like them.

Derek said that I didn't have much of a difficulty with slowly adopting to the differences in the UK, the more often I came over. Yet there are some subtle things I haven't been able to take up and when I'm upset about something going wrong between us because of such a cul­tural difference, I'm not quite sure if it would really be such a good idea to move to the UK one day.

There is for example the way people talk to each other. British are popular for their polite­ness and although I would say that you won't see it in the exaggerated way it sometimes is being shown on TV, you will still notice a hint of niceness and politeness that is uncommon in my acting with people. The easiest way  to describe it, is that I would more likely say "Do that!" instead of "Could you please?“ Yes, I did learn manners back in Kindergarten but people around me don't give me the feeling that I need to use them. Oh, I started to use them again in the UK but I still fall back into my usual manners because I forget to think English.

I wouldn't have thought that I'm such a typical Berlin citizen but when I talked with Derek about that issue I realized that I sometimes was exactly one of the stereotypes: frigid, rude, impolite and icy Teutonic. And I had actually considered myself to be different than others!

Derek said that I should get myself to a standard where I am nice with people and don't care what they think of that. It would put me above their standards. I said that this standard is how­ever still in building phase. Before I can get to such a standard I have to overcome my think­ing of other people's opinion being a vital issue for my life.

That will be a long way to go and it won't be easy. Another task to take on but it basically goes all around the same issue: Be optimistic, be self-confident and do your thing! Just like the English...

What is life?

Life in it's basics is first and foremost being. You have to exist to have a life. Then come the things that are necessary to stay alive: Breathing, eating, drinking, sleeping.

Life for the people of the western civilisation isn't so much about the basics anymore. The four necessary things are so self-evident that life for us means different things. Those are: socialising, working, having fun, and so on.

When I look at the lives of others I seem not to have a very good time. I am socialising and working and to a certain extend I am having fun. But there are so many other things to do and yet all I seem to care about is sitting at home and playing Guild Wars.

Things might be different if I had friends around me. A lot of the things I could do are more fun when being done with other people. Like going to the movies, or ten pin bowling, or just a nice walk in the park. I am getting along well with my colleagues but none of them would be someone to do such things with.

A lot of life seems to be about relationships. There are good and bad things in them, just as in every other part of life. If a relationship starts very good, heats up, tightens and then after a few years goes down to arguments and being upset, what would you think of it? Has it come to an end or are things just changing?

If things are changing, what would you do? Would you leave because you couldn't endure the pain of the arguments? Would you stay and live with things as they are, settling down to a normal friendship? Would you fight for the passion to come back?

I haven't had a lot of experience, so I'm still living with ideals in my head. My ideal of a relationship would consist of passion and harmony. Both are easy to gain once the sparks have risen and you have fallen in love. Most love relationships are passionate at the beginning and since you don't want to destroy the perfect world you try to keep things harmonic.

But how does it work with keeping both up? I have no idea what people do, who say they've got a perfect relationship going for many years. I don't really buy it. Passion decays with things settling down and also not having enough ideas to keep things heated up. Harmony decays because things change, people change and what once worked well might go to pieces in a jiffy.

And what happens if things seem to go to pieces for one person but not for the other? What happens if you are too in love to let it go? You finally see the whole truth: No matter what happened, no matter how angry, upset or unhappy you feel at the moment, no matter what you think about this relationship, you cannot end it. And eventually the pain will go again and things will return to normal.

And you will learn to live with the changes. They are after all, what makes life so interesting.

...between too little and too much information

Rekha: Has anyone ever asked you how it comes that you know a girl from Germany?

Derek: Well some have asked how I met you.

Rekha: And what did you say?

Derek: That I met you in Uru. Then I had to explain what Uru was.

Rekha: And how did they react to that?

Derek: Just said "Oh".

Rekha: I wonder what they thought. I guess most people are a bit surprised what happens on the internet.

Derek: I don't care what they think. But yes, some might find it strange.

Rekha: I do appreciate that you have to tell people something. It just feels weird to me at times.

Derek: I know what you mean but I saw the question in their faces. They had heard your different accent and they had seen how you interact with me. I had to say something.

Rekha: That's fine if you talk to your friends. But please stop telling everybody on the street that I'm German. Some here might not like that and I don't think that they need to know it.

Derek: Okay, I will consult you then, as to which information I may hand on.

(Polished chat log between me and Derek; taken with his permission)

Handing out information is an issue I had to deal with a lot in the last week. I've been in Leeds for holiday and went out with Derek and Doreen. Obviously when we met friends or neighbours Derek had to introduce me. One person actually said he had heard a lot of me and when we went to Derek's first bowling match the people there asked a lot of questions to me and to him and we were in a catch 22 position.

We had to say something but I was not very happy about the information Derek gave out. I've always tried to avoid telling people I know how I really got to know him. But in the days were people get married in Second Life, or friendships are made on Community Meetings this shouldn't be something strange anymore.

I know a lot of people who have become good friends through Uru and I've met several Uru couples. I wonder what Rand Miller thinks about this. And I wonder what the families of the couples thought, when they announced to them that they would marry someone they got to know in a game.

But is there really a difference to the trend of getting to know people in forums, chats, single meeting points, twitter and what so ever may be there? May games not be reconsidered as just another sort of chatroom, but with places to see and things to do?

I may be old-fashioned but that sounds a bit unromantic to me. And yet I myself can be nothing but eternally grateful that I played Uru and met Derek.
 
I guess I have to learn to stand with these facts and don't care about what people might think. I am happy and that is all that really matters.

Maybe I've revealed myself pretty much already by doing certain things. But it was part of the way I am and I can't do much against that.

I don’t understand why people don't see why I need this kind of information. But here I go to explain it again:

Everything needs a purpose and a meaning. The meaning of my writing is to let people enjoy a story and the purpose is to find out if they actually did enjoy it, which then would fulfil the meaning.

One can't be with the other. So I lose the meaning of my writing when I don't see the purpose anymore.
Why should I go on then?

Do I ask for too much? For me posting a story or something else feels like asking a question. The question is: What do you think about this? In normal, good conversation it should be expected that you will get an answer. But obviously not in the internet. Am I asking the wrong audience?

Blog post comments aren't that important because I mostly blog for myself to understand my feelings better.
But story comments are what I as author live from.

To you out there: Speak to me and give me a purpose!

No man is an island – John Donne
 

The actual meaning of this sentence fits very well with me. You can’t thrive in isolation, or as Larry said: You can’t grow if you cut yourself down.

There are many points in my life where I did certain things because people had given me sort of an input to do it. I remember how the few friends I had told me to go to the Youth Welfare Office to get help for our family. I remember how my social workers gave me the input to ask for more pocket money or to think about moving out of my parent’s home. And in the last two years I had so much input that I finally started to change.

Self-Judgement and the feeling not to fit into this world had caused me to seek isolation and cut myself down until I was a blade of grass, sunken deep into the earth of loneliness, sadness and bitterness.

Still there came input from the outside. The fact that I went after the things that had been suggested to me, might just have been because pushing me out was enough to make me do something. But have I ever done something by myself, without the influence of others?

That leads me to the main question how many of our actions are influenced from the outside and how many come from the self. It’s one of the most important philosophical questions but I can’t go much further into this now and my view on this is…influenced as well.

It doesn’t matter much to me that I made the final steps. The input has come from others in so many cases that I feel I’ve let myself being influenced all of my life. And I’m even grateful about this. When I think of all the things that might not have happened if certain people hadn’t been there, then I can hardly say how things would be today.

Earlier I wrote about being in dependence. Obviously I’ve never looked for freedom of mind though…I gave in happily to the influence. The best example of that goes back two years. I finished school and fell into a hole of idleness. Soon stones of self-doubt were crushing down me again. There was no influence from my friends at school and what was even worse: no influence from my parents either.

I seem to like sinking into a hole when things go bad and I get so numb down there that nothing matters to me anymore. Is it really possible that I can’t move by myself, that my spirits won’t rise without outside influence?!

Then a man came and dragged me out of the hole. He took care of the wounds, he helped me to let the past go and he poured new ideas and views into my mind. Soon I was dependent to him just because talking with him did me good and I enjoyed it as well. Other things added up to that as well. And I appreciated it all, for I hardly needed to do anything but just let the waters wash the rocks in my mind away.

Particularly the last year has proved that the influence has been worthwhile. I did the first thing by myself: I applied for the placement in the UK. I felt that I had left my old worries behind and could start anew. But I keep saying that it would have never come so far if I hadn’t had that man.

How far has that dependence brought me? I started to believe in God again, would even go so far to say that God sent him. I gave myself completely up to let the change happen. I opened my soul and let him pour fresh water onto the seeds growing deep within. I made myself dependent from his views because I finally had realized they were better and wiser than mine.

But there’s one thing hovering like a dark cloud over this dependence: The inevitable fact of death. One thing he is at least closer to in years. And I wonder what that would mean for me and my life?

I’ve never felt myself so much drawn to a person and so dependent. I can’t say what is going to happen with me when he dies but I know I’m afraid. I still carry my past with me and I don’t want to go back to it. It still happens that I fall into the hole again and want to stay there but then I get dragged out once again. He’s incredibly patient and good natured.

But I fear that the hole will be deeper than ever, maybe even endless when there’s no one like him going to drag me out again. Even believing in God doesn’t seem to help me much in those situations because I haven’t established such a close relationship to God yet that He could give me a kick hard enough to get out the hole again.

I don’t even know if I’m strong enough to walk the path to his end together with him. What if he becomes demented? Could I bear being together with a person I actually share so many memories with and yet can’t share them for real because he won’t remember anymore?

Those fears lead me to hope for something I don’t really believe in either: That I will find the right man, who can at least give me some of the things I need. Maybe that will make it less hard to part with the other one day… 

I can’t live with or without you – U2