“Yeah, I know.”
“Anything else interesting happen in your life lately?”
“Actually, yeah. I just got back from Spain a few days ago.”
I feigned interest. “How was it?”
“It was really nice. We stayed at this small town in the mountains and went hiking every day.”
“Sounds nice. Who did you go with?”
“A colleague from work. How about you? Anything interesting happen in your life?”
I thought for a moment. “Well… one night I got really drunk whilst playing five finger fillet and I managed to stab one of my fingers with the knife. Of course, this wasn’t the first time that has happened. However, on this particular occasion I must have hit a vein as blood came pouring out heavily and every time I bent my finger blood squirted out of it. Which was kinda hilarious if you think about it.”
She didn’t say anything after that, but her expression said it all. You need help, it said. Serious help. Alas, I didn’t believe in psychiatry. In fact, we’d had numerous arguments in the past due to my lack of belief in it.
I was about halfway done with the steak before I could stand it no longer. “This steak has way too much fat,” I said. “In fact, nearly half of it is fucking fat. What the fuck? What am I paying thirty euros for? Why is everything in this world only half of what it’s advertised? Or less.”
“Yeah, it’s not the best I’ve had either,” she said nonchalantly.
I ate what I could and left the fat on the plate. Meeting her had been a mistake. I felt even more depressed than before. Story of my life.
“Well, this steak was as fucked as was meeting you,” I said after we were finished. I dug some cash out of my wallet, smacked it on the table, and got up. “I’m leaving. Goodbye.”
Outside, I lit a cigarette and walked away. Unsurprisingly, she did not follow me. Perhaps I had been rude, but I simply couldn’t talk to her. I got choked up. It was largely due to her that I was in such a mess after all. I just couldn’t get over how at first it had seemed as though she truly liked me for who I was, that I didn’t need to pretend around her. And yet, the charm had worn off. She had hung on to the relationship for a while for lack of anything better to do. But then she had found a job as a veterinarian. And suddenly she didn’t need me anymore. She had found something else to fill the emptiness in her heart. Something better. And I became redundant.
Alone and with a big fucking hole in my heart, I walked onwards to the next bar, deciding to get as drunk as humanly possible. Because when you were drunk, you tended to forget the pain you felt about the world.
Although you might get nauseous, it was better than being conscious.
11
I was on my way towards a bar on the outskirts of Old Town called Scarlet Emperor when suddenly I stopped.
On the pavement before me stood a raven on top of a bloodied pigeon, pecking at its lifeless carcass. The pigeon’s feathers were ruffled, its heart and other organs were missing, and bits of bone were sticking out. Only the head and wings still remained.
The raven continued pecking as I walked on.
12
Despite its name, Scarlet Emperor was a rather shitty-looking place, resembling more of a skatepark than an actual bar. And yet it had a certain rugged charm to it. It was unpretentious.
Besides, I had been there plenty of times before and had met some interesting people. As the bar was next to a hostel where lots of backpackers and travelers stopped by, it often had many foreigners as its patrons and I usually preferred to converse with them more than with my fellow countrymen.
A few people who frequented the place even knew me there. One Turkish guy used to call me “professor”, probably because of my tendency to descend into long monologues about various things that I found interesting or idiotic, mostly the latter.
However, when I entered the bar this time around, I didn’t see anybody I recognized. I bought a beer from the goth bartender with cheek piercings and went into the smoking room, which was empty.
I lit a cigarette. For nothing better to do, I started examining the graffiti on the walls: CAPITALISM = SHIT. Okay, I thought, but what do you replace it with? FUCK THE SYSTEM. Sure, but then what? LOVE IS AN ILLUSION. Yeah, a neurochemical one, just like happiness. GO CRAZY AAH. Already on my way there, buddy. IF ONLY I’D GET FUCKED AS MUCH AS I GET BEATEN UP. Well, I don’t know about you, but life already fucks me plenty. THE FIRST STEP TO ETERNAL LIFE IS THAT YOU HAVE TO DIE. Only if you become famous after death, which isn’t very useful. STOP DRINKING ALCOHOL OR YOU WILL DIE. But what if I want to?
A few people walked into the room as I was examining the graffiti. Two of them started talking with each other, but a young woman with a tomboy haircut came to stand by the window, smoking a cigarette alone. I stepped up to her and placed my beer onto the windowsill. “Have you ever been depressed?” I asked her.
“What?” She looked at me, apparently caught off guard. “Why would you ask me something like that?”
“Well, why not?”
“Because it’s personal.”
I took a sip of beer. “Is it? But then half the world is depressed.”
“Yes, but they don’t talk about it.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
She finished her cigarette and lit another one. I hoped this meant that she was interested in continuing the conversation with me and not that she was a chain-smoker, not that I would have minded if she were.
“So you just walk up to random women and talk about depression with them?”
“Not usually, no.”
“Then what’s different today?”
“What’s different today is that I don’t give a fuck.”
“Hmm. Sounds like you’re depressed,” she said, seemingly amazed at her wit. “Maybe you should seek help.”
“You’ve hit the nail on the head,” I said, taking a big puff from my cigarette. “However, I don’t think that depression is a mental illness. In fact, I don’t think there are any mental illnesses.”
“What on earth do you mean by that?”
“I mean that there are no diseases in the brain that cause mental illness, and neither is there any ‘chemical imbalance’. Mental illnesses are merely reactions to our environment that are based upon life experience and knowledge. So when a person gets depressed it is his life experience and knowledge telling him that things are not as good as he has been led to believe. And indeed, when examined in depth, most things in this world are shit. Hence the depression.”
“Oh yeah?” she said combatively. “Then what about people who get depressed without any reason?”
I let out a puff of smoke. “What, you mean happy people that get depressed?”
“Yes.”
“There are no such people.”
“Bullshit.”
“Oh, I’m sure you think they’re happy. Perhaps they also think they’re happy. However, most of the brain works unconsciously. So even if they’ve lied enough to that small part of themselves that is conscious to believe that everything is fine and everything is good all the time, it is in fact the unconscious part of the brain telling itself that it is not actually fine and their depression is a sign of that.”
“That doesn’t sound very plausible.”
“Okay. Then how about this. Depression is simply an evolutionary mishap because humans evolved in a world where they were too busy trying to survive rather than to learn about the world. And now, since we’re not busy surviving anymore and we have so much more knowledge than our bodies were designed for, we are slowly beginning to realize that everything is ultimately empty and meaningless and there is no real point to any of this ‘surviving’. And that’s where depression comes from. From this realization and not some ‘chemical imbalance’.”