never before in my entire fucking life have i experienced so much fucking misery in one day! not first hand; just as a moral human being. all witnessed at this social center i attend frequently. its a free breakfast and cheap, solid food kind of center/café, with about 10 adjacent apartments/homes and a in-house nurse for the most helpless. all very heavy on the crazy/addicts/lonely/drunks/homeless - guess where i fit in.
i usually just get a cup of coffee in the café and then go say hi to the Cattletheif who lives there. this morning the nurse is there and it turns out they are planning his funeral. who to call and what to do when he dies. he's two months from turning 60, is wheelchair-bound and his speech is illegible, because he bit off his tongue, back in the day. back when he also drank coolant and ate a cat(!). last year we joked about shipping him to Switzerland for euthanasia. he wants to live be 60 and then die; and is to be buried with a bottle of booze, his beloved pipe and some hash.
back at the café again, i see a guy who i've been told is a kiddie fucker. knowing that these are totally false bullshit rumors coming from a crazy junkie woman, i've been wanting to talk to this guy for a while. he's been a frequent guest at the social center lately, with a leg in cast and sitting in a wheelchair - aided by what turns out to be a half-brother.
but how do you confront a total stranger with such rumors and why would you be bothered, knowing very well that the rumors were false?
i like to think that i was partly motivated to do this, because i'm such a good, moral person and the right thing to do was to let him know of the rumors, just in case they were totally oblivious to him... but in all honesty, my motivation was hate and anger towards the very same crazy junkie woman. The instigator of a violent intrusion of my home, twice, by zonked out speed freaks. this is another long story in itself and is what i used as a way to break the ice. all i knew was that he knew of the crazy junkie woman and before i got a chance to bring up the child molesting fairy tale, he had already told me all about it. we swapped stories about the cunt, he bummed a couple of smokes off me and we chat some more. no pedo, as suspected. his leg, by the way, was maliciously broken by bikers over debt.
at this point, the most miserably-looking person sitting at the table joins the conversation and argues that the right thing to do would be to cooperate with the police, but maybe not the safest.
we all greet each other and it turns out the miserable persons twin daughters would have turned 14 years old today. i express my sympathies and assumed that his twin daughters died together. no, they died one at a time, several years apart. getting quite affected by this surreal scenario coming from a brutally honest, 40-something year old, retired British soldier, asking for details seemed irrelevant and needless. this poor man is obviously suicidal, i suspect that is why he is so very talkative. stunned as i am at this point, the occurring order and details here get blurry.
i'm not sure if he told me when his wife had left him but it seemed recent and he did make it clear to me that she had called to tell him that she had a date, and would finally get sex from a real man. all this said in a surprisingly nonchalant tone, while looking for a funny picture for me to see on his iphone.
i declined his first incitement to see a picture of his wife while remarking that i'd prefer my imaginary picture of that devil woman he just described. then he admitted to have been aggressive but ensured me that he was never directly violent and that he still loved her. the break-up must have been recent, because he had a very hard time being alone in his seemingly empty apartment. this is exactly what the social center is for.
this man was on the werge of suicide and clearly not a drug addict; just desperate. the only thing keeping him alive was his son.
where to place the information about the brain hemorrhage or the brain tumor i really don't know. the poor man was a victim of both.
along came jimmy sřrensen - an acquaintance, re-diagnosed from asbergers syndrome to autism - and sat down next to the miserable one, with a piece of paper and pen in hand. this was a nice handwritten list of all his friends and two columns, one for christmas and one for new years eve. i could see where this was going and wondered how many on his list are actual friends; this confirmed my suspicion that he really does considers the very little we socialized, last year ago, the basis for a genuine friendship. he was systematically going through his list asking people what their plans were for the holidays. i told him i had no plans yet and asked what his were. it was obvious that he was desperately looking for less lonely christmas and new years eve than last year, which he spent alone with an employee of the 'special home' he lives in.
the miserable man remarked that he too had no-one to celebrate the holidays with and most likely would be alone. jimmy was quick to dismiss the notion, unintentionally rude, with his characteristic lack of social skills (the kind of social skills that lead to a criminal conviction for indecent exposure; do not show randoms girls on the street a picture of your penis and ask for their opinion). i decided to interrupt the awkward moment with a loud "MEET JIMMY SŘRENSEN" to the miserable one and mentioned the fact that one of my flatmates is - de facto - an orphan (mother deceased and alcoholic father, living in the other end of the country) and that we have no plans as such and suggest that maybe we should all get together and celebrate a Christmas of Misery.
i've changed my phone number three times in the past half year, because of the drama and consequent beef with the crazy junkie woman, and jimmy sřrensen was one of the many insignificant ones who never got my new number(s). i gave him my current number and told him i'd keep him updated. i left the miserable one with a little note saying "come have a great shitmas with the jolly anarchists" with my phone number and our address and told home to take it easy.
outside i meet a sick alcoholic in dire need of alcohol. a man i got to know years ago, back when he was pro musician and still a part of my parents' circle of friends. i have no small change when he asks me for money, so i walk with him to the kiosk where i buy four cheap beers. and the gratitude is enormous.
yeah, i socialize with scum.
wow!!! is this really your life, or are you writing this for a book?
Well whatever this is, I think it's really good except for a lot of grammatical errors, but I don't know if you want me to point them out, so I'm not. Your writing really made me laugh in a lot of places, and whether it's real or not it made me feel bad for you and the people around you. I really don't see how you can be in misery when your living, I guess all your missing is happiness. This is good though, I love reading something that I can laugh too!!!!!
no fiction. this is harsh, cruel reality for these people. i'm sad to say. my life is squeaky clean and peachy compared to what these poor souls are struggling with.
social outcasts come in all shapes and sizes. my decent into the lowest class of society, in its simplified form, is the classic: addiction + alcoholism = depression -> homelessness. this happens...
my case goes something like this: i'm 31 years old and never had a job. not because i'm a hopeless loser who can't work. i'm an anarchist and i can handle bureaucrats, i know their game cuz i read the rulebook.. i was quick to find my way to avoid wage slavery and turned it into an active political lifestyle when i realized how egotistical and antisocial society really is; instead of finishing school in 2 years like everyone else, i did it in 5 - just because i could. and started doing music. and drinking excessively.
the downside of this lifestyle is the social stigma.
but hey, i quit drinking from one day to the next, 19 months ago...
i feel kinship with bums because they truely to appreciate life! unlike all the sheep who THINK they do. it saddens me.
i never had any respect for the career criminal subculture ... greedy (capitalists) and most often racist and homophobic.
i should stop ranting.
glad you liked it.
no don't stop ranting. This is actually really interesting because I've never talked to someone who ever had these views.
so did u lose everything? What started your addiction? I also think that not all bums appreciate life, some are out their taking advantage of the help their getting.
I'm trying to understand your reasoning for doing the things you did but I can't. Why care what the bureaucrats or society thinks. Why not live a life where your happy. I don't think your happy the way your living now.
material possessions have no value. no magic. it builds character to own nothing!.
i am happy and take pride in being an active member of my local community and not a slave of the sick society.
my lifestyle is direct action against comformity
is happiness really something you get from wasting 1/3 of your entire life, working?
wasting time, hunting money.
waste money, spend money on something you really have no need for.
ultimately pointless
but people believe they need shit!
you feel the urge to buy the new expensive thing the very instant the logo hits your eye, before you even know what exactly this new expensive thing is and why you want it.
don't worry. THEY know why.
I agree material possessions doesn't build character, but their value is priceless to the people that own them. How are the people that work slaves? I mean if my mom didn't work then I wouldn't eat, and if I didn't eat then I would die. We can't depend on the government to give us rations of food, and we can't depend on other people to come up with food to give us. In a way we need to work because nothing is free in this world. If people didn't work then how would you eat?! Life is not all about just working, I understand that you can enjoy the simple things in life. I don't look as myself as a slave to society, but as an individual. I get to decide what to do with my money, I don't have to be manipulated by fancy cars or jewelry I can do absolutely nothing with my money. People can work because they want to, and they work by doing something that makes them happy.
Nothing is ever pointless in life. There's is always a reason and a cause behind everything. My cause and yours may be not so different at all, but we just go about it a different way. Some people are just blind and can't see that materialistic things aren't everything, while others can handle it and can take charge of their life.
I think it's great that your happy being who you are, and that your an active member of society, but I just wished that you didn't give up on society.
don't get me wrong. i'm not anti-social.
i want a NEW society. full of love and solidarity.
How are the people that work slaves? I mean if my mom didn't work then I wouldn't eat, and if I didn't eat then I would die.
you answered your own question there.
We can't depend on the government to give us rations of food,
no, the system knows this and only gives people the bare minimum to survive. not that is isn't possible to give enough. i know it is taboo to describe our so-called civilized society a form of slavery.
no tyrant is interested in killing its slaves.
and we can't depend on other people to come up with food to give us.
sadly the propaganda of western society has lead people to believe this shit! :(
i believe this is directly against human nature! we are a social being and if this really was the case we would have no civilization! how do you think we got out of the caves and strong enough to slay the woolen mammoth?
co-operation is the key word here. you see it in nature all the time.
if you baked the cake, its your cake.
edit:
you see how my argumentation goes all the way back to the cavemen.... i could also just take it back to pre-industrial revolution and look at feudal society. we never left serfdom mentally and the master we are now under is capitalism.
