Der Himmel über Berlin

Out of some strange instinct you felt like texting the person that made you realize you’re gay. Maybe you needed the sensation of healed wounds. This is what she always made you feel: sympathy and connection stay. Wounds and the inflicted pain vanish. Always. If you let them heal.

As you were talking to her, reminiscing and enjoying her way of being, which was always like a smirk - a sad one from time to time, but still a smirk – you figured you needed to take more care of your body. The occasional days without food and then days with loads of alcohol and pizza and sweets were not doing you good. And all that crying and the dehydration, too.

Also there was a short circuit somewhere in the night and as you were undressing, the light bulb on your night stand and the charger of your phone went powerless. And it got dark and silent. This time it wasn’t scaring, it felt safe. No light, no messages, no alarm clock, no notification that you should have turned off already but couldn’t force yourself to do. Another night with very diffuse and strange dreams, but by now you were almost interested in what your brain would fabricate out of your worries and thought spirals.

After the good talk you had, somehow you were able to clean up your room the next day. No idea where that came from, but you were happy about it. You lit your favorite scented candle, collected the accumulated glasses and plates and coffee mugs and then made your bed. When you looked out of the window, you could almost touch the huge maple tree which was moved by the wind, like it was running from one firm hug to another one. The wind on your skin made you notice that it was warmer than the last days. No sun today either, but the temperature had risen, was softer, was more gentle and not so stinging and hurtful.

You could hear your flatmate making coffee and the anticipation hit you a little bit unexpected. The sound of boiling water. Clattering, that transported two heaped tablespoons of grounded cheap coffee into the French press, the clanking of trying to dust off any excess coffee from the spoon into the glass body. And the sound of the water being spilled into the brown powder with a slowly higher turning sound, climbing its pitches, until it had reached the desired volume. About a litre of coffee that took just three flatmates or two to empty. In a few minutes.

Nature has cunning ways of finding your weakest spot, you thought. The soft stroke of the wind coming through your window urged to resurface a memory of lips, and the care and affection that went into the touch in that exact spot.

Later that day you went on a walk with your flatmate. She kept stressing that she would love to have your problems because she had it so much worse. In some ways she was so utterly bad at consoling or empathy itself, you could have a jaw drop and a good laugh about it from time to time.

When my boss told me I was bad at my job, I

was literally heartbroken, I felt my heart break!

Oh well, oh well. There she went.

And I don’t feel anything about my ex!

She’s not my ex, you thought.

I only miss her cooking, because it was tasty.

You miss nothing about her way of being, you miss something she did for you, you miss the way she cooks because you liked the food? Not because that was her way of showing you affection and that she cared for you?

She rolls her eyes at you and sighs. Of course not. How could you assume elsewise?

This conversation started just because you went to the supermarket you cried in the day before yesterday.

When you tried to pick out a good cheese, your glance got glued to the precut cheese cubes. How could precut cheese cubes be your kryptonite. How could they. That was a bizarre and heartwarming story. You had to think back to the discussion you had on whether cheese cubes were a snack. She said no, you said yes. And there they were sitting, grinning at you in their perfect little shapes.

I hate my life, you said out loud and the guy to your left lifted his eyebrows and backed off.

Your flatmate asked you why and kept trying to annoy you by poking your side. The times you explained to her friendly that she was supposed to please stop that because she was crossing your boundaries by touching you unannounced and unwanted – they had exceeded an imaginable number. So you just didn’t react to her. It worked. She stopped.

But then you remembered that the only person who understood you on that topic was now gone and you could not go to her and rant on how annoying your flatmate was being. This fact made you even angrier, so you just went to pay for the stupid cheese and waited outside.

Today you weren’t sad. You were angry. Your therapist would’ve been so proud. And you were so angry.

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Standing in your room, you held your breath. The saltwater of your eyes stinging on your sore nostrils which you wiped uncountable times the last days. Why the wave of pain hit in this exact moment, you can’t quite figure out. Was it that her name was not on the first mentioned people who watched your Instagram story? Could be. Did you scroll through her feed and fed off of her smile and her dorky poses? The picture you took? Probably. Or was it that her profile picture changed to your most favorite childhood picture of her? Most definitely.

It bothered you endlessly that she had stepped foot into your home. The places you shared with and developed especially for her. Your whole interior matched her aesthetic, or at least you tried it to. Just a few hours ago you took off her postcards from the walls and tucked them away in the Macbeth she got you from her favorite bookshop in NYC.

Just yesterday you went out with a very good friend and said:

I have to remind myself that I didn’t do that for somebody else, I did that for me.

Somebody else might have had benefits from my choices, but I made them for me.

When you were eight, you asked your dad why the superhero in the strange movie you were watching together made that strange swooshing sound when he travelled in time or space.

That is the air, rushing into the space he leaves behind when he departs to a new adventure, Thea, he said. It should be way louder actually.

Now you knew how loud it was, really. Only that it happened inside yourself. And in your home, every single time you pictured her, playing darts or going crazy about not winning a game. Or simply just sleeping in the exact bed you were staring at. Holding yourself, trying to keep you from shaking. Every single time you had these memories in your head and heart, they dissolved, leaving the thunder of the emptiness, trembling, making the space not just haptically but also acoustically ever so present.

Well, that was exaggerated, but still.

Hurt nonetheless.

What was probably the worst, was the part about not being able to blame someone. Sure, there were people to blame, but in the end – you could not influence, let alone change feelings or people. You could just change who you surround yourself with. As some stupid pinterest wallpaper would suggest.

You had not been this way of heartbroken since you were sixteen, actually. And it impressed you a lot to feel how much you had changed in these rough seven years on such an intensive matter. Turns out, if you have a good self-esteem and self-conciousness, you can’t blame your intelligence, your weight or your sexual abilities, you have to take the hard and healthy road of heartbreak. The one where you have to sit it out and treat yourself well. Without fast and maladaptive coping mechanisms like diets or harming yourself via drugs and unhealthy hook ups. While we don’t mind the occasional getting drunk with friends and dancing crying with a wine bottle in your hand singing, no, screaming to “Dancing on my own”. Because that’s our business.

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On saturdays the bee doctor climbed up on the roof of the bike shed, where the bees lived. You loved the term bee doctor, it sounded so much more caring than apiarist. Beekeeper was fine, too. But you found bee doctor nicer. His name was Maxime. The bees swarming around him, he examined every single one of the dozen of trays. Carefully lifting the wood, carefully turning, precisely looking for things you didn’t know and precisely tucking the tray back.

I want someone who cares for me like Maxime does for the bees, you thought.

Well, not someone who is paid to visit you, obviously. But someone who stops by every single saturday. Someone who is not creating its life around you but integrating you in it. Counting on you. Like a cake is not about egg, not about butter or flour. But without it, it’s significantly different. Not worse or better. Just different.

Does he get stung? Do the bees know he is good to them?

From your place at the window you could watch Maxime easily while picking the strings on your Gibson that made your fingertips feel like you touched a sun person. The song you had in mind and which you kept playing just stuck with you. Imprinted on your temporal cortex.

It also made you cry in front of the deep frozen Pizzas at the supermarket yesterday, but that was arbitrary. At least you wished it was. You went out and stood in the sun for a second. The light made its way through the houses and onto a piece of the parking lot you were standing on.

The afternoon and evening you spent crying in your room. When you went to the kitchen to prepare some dinner and your flatmate asked whether you needed a hug, you started crying so heavy, that the tears fell on the wooden floor in front of the oven.

The next day your eyes were a disaster and your head hurt, badly. There’s that. But your friend took you to play soccer in the church garden. She was the first person that didn’t make you feel bad about your concerning lack of ability to behave sportive around a ball.

What remained? Now that all the quotes, all the songs you shared with her, everything that made you think of her made her think of someone else? The songs you wrote or covered for her she listened to imagining herself as the lyrical me and the “you” was not you but another woman?

First and foremost, there was a lot of - let me tell you that - a lot of anger. But after that? There was just a collection of songs, natural phenomenons, foods and smells you would never connect with someone else than her again. At last the memories. That sneaked up on you like hick ups. Unexpected and seldom but then, mostly, in rows, that you violently had to shut down, with the strangest coping mechanisms. Drinking a glass of water upside down or doing a handstand. Smashing things, crying heavily in public places or getting sick and not eating the rest of the day.

So, what remained?

Bright red and blue socks. The scratchy black wool jumper Lisa gave you. Good books that made you laugh or cry. Strangers smiling at you. The sun, rising and setting, in all her colors. Moving you to tears, to dance, to get angry – music. The clouds, forming shapes, like apples or glasses. The ripples on the water that visualized the touch of the wind and stream. Deep dark grey and blue colors on a sky that was about to burst into rain falls. Ice cream and champagne, fresh pizza and bread, also Mango, a very mentionable contestant. The laugh of your friend Christine. Swans bitching about the ducks and hunting them. Unexpected compliments of strangers or friends. The elder tree hanging over the canal, that got bleached out by the sun, so it turned from deep purple to rose and to white eventually. And like the tree’s blossoms lost their color, her color, the pain in you faded. Ever so gently, ever so silent. It packed its bags. And sometimes it came back, because it realized it forgot something. So you dug it up. And you let it hurt.

One day, you would hear her name in the mouth of someone else. One day, you would smell her perfume on a stranger or in the drug store. You stopped in your tracks, waiting for the pain to hit you. Bracing for impact. But it had gone. Its room empty and cleaned, the door closed.

Today was not that day. But you knew that day would come, with certainty. So why hurry or slow it down? It would reach you, either way.

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Your mouth still tastes like puke. As if the universe wouldn’t grant you closure. As if it wasn’t enough. As if seeing seagulls and craws everywhere you go wasn’t enough. And just like that you are 14 again. Creating playlists to sing to crying. To lie on your bed and stare at the ceiling to. You fall asleep to the Smiths on your disc man. You forgot how pathetic you could become and somehow this makes you laugh about yourself.

Over the best plate of arabic food you will find in the city you try to call home now, you try to push in the nutrients, because earlier that morning you cried, because you felt so weak. Your body is shrinking and while that sparks old shadows in your mind and feeds the joy of shrinking yourself so small that people worry, you try to withhold the sick lust of your long lost disorders. Your favorite place of them all is pretty much your favorite place because of its walnut paste and its down to earth mentality. Not at all pretty, loud and cold – but this one shop has the best food you ever tasted.

You close your eyes and try to taste every bit of it. Every swirl of smoke, every soft brush of sweetness and every sting of acidity. You are asked whether you are alright and without opening your eyes you say: “Yes. Just trying to enjoy it.”

A third way through your plate you are asked, whether she was very upset and hurt and suddenly it is all back. Your stomach gets angry about having food in it and tries to get rid of it. You breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth and you try to say it calm but steady: “Let’s not talk about that, okay, just not now.” But its already too late. You are glad that you could eat most of your favorite cardamom carrots in the world before the giant stone in your stomach returned.

You will go to the cinema and the smell of fresh popcorn will make you sick. In the soft dark and red plush you can cry silently if you want to. Sipping diet coke which is literally hard to swallow. Like a child you will feel angry and misunderstood but now your adulting perspective of reflecting your own doing in this whole disaster destroys your hiding behind childish naivety. This is harder than just finger pointing. Because if you were, you would find yourself shocked in the mirror, looking at your own face, your pointed fingertips just inches away from each other.

You bathe in this feeling, even if it is obviously miserable of you. Sometimes you wonder if people think you’re stupid. As if you didn’t notice how they try to talk comforting and supporting and trying not to stir something up when it is almost unbearably obvious. You are so sad. You don’t want to go to that new city on your own, eight hours of train rides and stares into the grey landscape, a few days lonely in a bed that’s too big. It just hurts you so badly. It hurts so badly. And you don’t even have the right to feel this way.

You don’t want the cut on your finger to heal. You want to be reminded everytime you wash your hands and the water cleans the wound that this was a very happy moment. It will fade. Just like the cut, just like the blood.

You don’t want to wash it off your clothes. They just lay there in the corner of your bathroom. You don’t want to wash it away.

From time to time an old voice comes by like a stranger passerby that you share a glance with and he whispers “maybe this is the proof for what you always seem to find in people” and you end his sentence yourself whispering: they just want your body.

Which is bullshit, you know that. But because of your past and what was done to you, what you did to yourself and what people let happen, old old hands of doubt crawl out of the dark and softly tuck on your shirt and your hair. This is the only thing they see in you, the voices say. Your body. The only thing that makes of your worth.

And softly you start to notice that you make this about yourself. As always. It is always about yourself because the realisation that it is in fact about someone else and their decision against you is not bearable at any point. It is not about yourself. It is about someone else.

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Moin,

ein Jahr vergeht mittlerweile extrem schnell. Manchmal wirkt es, ich kann es nicht genug betonen, so, als hätte jemand einfach für mich in einen unermesslich hohen Gang geschaltet und seitdem zieht das Leben förmlich an mir vorbei - nicht unbedingt in einem schlechten Sinne. Es ist gleichzeitig viel passiert und im selben Zug ist vieles noch genauso, wie es mal war. So ganz hab ich das auch noch nicht durchschaut. Vielleicht hat mich im letzten Jahr nichts genug aufgeregt, aber das ist nicht wahr - ich saß oft genug mit Wut-Tränen vor den Nachrichten oder war sprachlos und entsetzt - warum auch immer ich nicht geschrieben habe, das habe ich in den letzten Tagen überwinden können. Manchmal braucht es mehrere Sachen auf einmal, damit sich bei mir etwas in Bewegung setzt und um ehrlich zu sein ist es auch nicht leicht, all die Gedanken und Meinungen immer in einen geordneten Wortstrom zu formen. Mich hat in den letzten Tagen oder mittlerweile sogar Wochen etwas beschäftigt, was eventuell nicht besonders vorreitend oder neu ist, aber ich hatte das Gefühl, es nochmal zu sagen.

"Wie Schuppen von den Augen fallen." "Tomaten auf den Augen haben." "Etwas ist jemandem ein Dorn im Auge." "Jemanden aus den Augen verlieren." "Die Augen sind das Fenster zur Seele."

Unser Sehsinn ist im Vergleich zu dem anderer Lebewesen ziemlich schlecht. Bestimmte Adlerarten können beispielsweise ein Fingerschnippen in drei Kilometer Entfernung sehen. Dennoch messen wir unserer Sehkraft extrem viel bei. Vielleicht fühlen wir uns deswegen berechtigt, etwas in einfache Sachverhältnisse, die wir zu verstehen glauben, hineinzuinterpretieren.
Jeder hat schon mal eine optische Täuschung angeschaut, in der Farben oder Elemente scheinbar zu erkennen sind, die das Bild gar nicht abbildet. Daran lässt sich sehr gut zeigen: Wir lassen uns leicht darin beeinflussen, was wir sehen und wie wir es interpretieren. Einfach nur durch den Kontext in dem wir uns gerade befinden, ob wir nun absichtlich oder willkürlich beeinflusst wurden. Wir wissen, wie trügerisch unser Gehirn sein kann.

Warum hinterfragen wir dann nicht viel häufiger unser Urteil über das, was wir sehen?

Vorurteile. Ich habe sie, du hast sie und die Person, die gerade neben dir sitzt oder dein Nachbar - wir haben alle Vorurteile.

Wir sehen etwas, interpretieren es aufgrund von Erfahrungen und unseren vorgefertigten Analysetools und bewerten es. Daran war einmal nichts falsch, es ist ein wichtiger Mechanismus, der uns hilft, Situationen vorausschauend zu deuten. Früher ging es eigentlich darum, Gefahren einzuschätzen - insofern ist das schnelle Interpretieren von Situationen eine nützliche und lebenserhaltende Technik, die aber aufgrund ihrer tiefliegenden Bedeutung sehr schwer zu überarbeiten ist. Genauso wie Reflexe können wir unsere blitzschnelle Situationsanalyse kaum stoppen. Mittlerweile leben viele Menschen in einer luxuriösen Welt, die diese Mechanismen nicht mehr als Überlebensstrategie erfordert. Wir machen trotzdem munter weiter.

Für jeden Typ Mensch haben wir ein Bild im Kopf, eine Assoziation, die aus tausend unterschiedlichen Faktoren so ist, wie wir sie eben vor uns haben. Leider lassen wir uns davon immer noch beeinflussen. Sei es nun ein wertender Vergleich zwischen der Realität und unserem Vorurteilsbild, eine Zuordnung eines Menschen in eine Kategorie, weil er in unser Vorurteilsraster fällt, eine Äußerung darüber, dass ein Mensch nicht in unsere Vorstellung einer Kategorie passt - und eine daraus abgeleitete Infragestellung der Identität dieser Person. Unsere Vorurteile beeinflussen uns immer noch. Manchmal auch diejenigen, die sich vielleicht frei von allen Vorbehalten gegenüber jedweder Gruppierung empfinden.

Wir Menschen sind herrlich einfach gestrickt. Viel einfacher, als wir es uns einbilden oder wünschen.
Und wir wissen: Ein Gehirn formt und entwickelt sich durch die Erfahrungen, die der dazugehörige Organismus gemacht hat. Der Spruch "Fische werden nur so groß wie ihre Aquarien" ist als Metapher in diesem Kontext ziemlich treffend. Ich sehe also ein, dass es schwer ist, tief in unserem Gehirn eingearbeitete Mechanismen zu überarbeiten.
Warum aber nicht mal einen Versuch wagen? Warum halten wir nicht mehr inne und fragen uns, ob unsere Interpretation der Dinge nicht auch fehlerhaft ist? Warum lässt die Tatsache, dass unsere Wahrnehmung der Umwelt nur eine Abbildung ist und keinesfalls eine Replikation, nicht mehr Menschen aufhören?

Ist ein Mann in einem Flugzeug, der einen Vollbart und eine Gebetsmütze trägt und nervös betet, etwa Dschihadist?

Wie fähig ist eine junge Frau Mutter zu sein, wenn sie gerade noch ein Kind war?

Ist eine Frau, die schon zum zweiten Mal in diesem Monat eine Pille danach braucht, unverantwortlich?

Wirkt ein homosexueller Mann nicht authentisch, wenn er gern boxt und Autorennen schaut und liebend gern Bier trinkt?

Auf jede einzelne Situation habe ich eine Antwort: Es geht uns nichts an. Wir lassen so viele Dinge von uns abperlen, verschließen die Augen, aber wir sind uns nie zu schade für unangebrachte Spekulationen.

Ich wünschte, wir hörten auf, die Welt als schwarz und weiß zu sehen. Vielleicht wäre es mal an der Zeit, die Dinge einfach mal so zu sehen, wie sie sind. Und nicht als das, was wir daraus machen. Was uns geschieht, was wir erfahren, ist immer das, was wir daraus machen - das ist sowohl ein Fluch als auch ein Segen. In jedem Sinn ist es aber etwas, das wir beeinflussen können.

Es ist egal, ob es um Sexualität, Ethik, Flüchtlingspolitik, Selbstbestimmung, Umweltschutz oder Ernährung und alles was da sonst noch kommt geht. Menschen sind mehrdimensional. Wir fühlen uns innerhalb eines Tages mal eher gut, mal eher schlecht, genauso schwanken unsere Essensvorlieben, unsere Ansichten zu politischen Themen. Unsere Eigenschaften und Auswüchse sind keine Schlagzeilen oder in Stein gemeißelte Thesen. Das, was uns, jeden einzelnen im Detail, ausmacht, ist fluide. Dann sollten wir doch auch unsere Weltanschauung an uns anpassen.
Nehmen wir nämlich mal unsere extrem deutschen Etiketten und Klebchen von den ganzen Schubladen, die in unser Hirn eingebaut sind, könnten wir vielleicht etwas relativ banales verstehen. Das, was den Inhalt einer Schublade ausmacht, ist der Inhalt der Schublade. Nicht das, was außen dran steht. Also. Erst in die Schublade gucken. Dann jemandem erzählen was du gesehen hast, nicht was da drin ist.
Falls du weniger mit Worten als mit Mathe am Hut hast: Es ist unprofessionell, easy peasy lemon squeezy Kausalaussagen über die Population von der völlig unrepräsentativen Stichprobe, die du eventuell vor dir hast, zu machen. Just don't.
Jeder Mensch, dem du heute begegnest, hat seine Gründe, das zu tun, was er tut. Und es so zu tun, wie er es tut. Solange er damit niemandem die persönliche Freiheit nimmt, ist das sein Ding. Und bedarf keines Urteils.

Immer in Liebe,

Thea

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