Part 7

The escape

Candace seemed so unreal to me, like far away, as if she had nothing to do with my life. Therefore she was also the perfect retreat. The ideal intermission of reality in which I have lost myself on and on. The reality I myself had created. A reality in which I seemingly had control, which apparently ate me up bit by bit.

I didn’t want this whole responsibility any more, the load overwhelmed me, however, I could not look like a loser, how could I have possibly admitted in front of all the others that I wasn’t able to bear the responsibility any more? The fact that I also wanted to collapse sometimes, that I would also have liked to scream sometimes “Help me!” No, as much as I also wanted it I would have never admitted in front of my family and friends. For the appearance I had created became too powerful, had already developed a momentum of its own, the illusion had become too real to be able to still expose it as a hallucination.

Candace was a stranger to me, she had nothing to do with my life, I didn’t have to prove anything to her, with her I hadn’t to fulfill any expectations, and I could let myself fall. At that moment in which she said to me: „You can not always have the control.” I lost myself and at the same time found myself again. Lost because I gave up everything at that moment in what I had believed in. Found again because I could finally let go, could finally put down this weight and could just be myself. It is so much easier to slump yourself with strangers, if you know that there are no expectations to meet. You don’t connect the stranger with your own future, it is only the moment that counts, no consequences, no obligations, no expectations, only a little breather of everyday life. I had never felt even the least for Candace, I can hardly remember her face, she was only a means to an end. A piece of meat which promised brief alleviation. And god knows how much I had needed it.

However, at last it became a backlash really. I had to pay the price for a few minutes of alleviation with the excruciating feelings of guilt for it. How could I look into Tina’s eyes ever again? And almost even more badly: how could I ever look into my own eyes again? How could I ever look into the mirror again without seeing, the face of a betrayer as well, the face of a failure?