Bezpłatny fragment - The Smell Of Wild Oranges

The Smell Of Wild Oranges

The Diary Of A Neurotic

Meet Hope, who is a neurotic and struggles with her own mortality, depression, pain associated with numerous losses, loneliness, rejection and fear of everyday life. She experiences emotional states that many would describe as negative. However, each person experiences them and each of these feelings has its important and necessary function. Therefore, Hope experiences such feelings as fear, anger, jealousy, sadness and guilt. She is not good at dealing with everyday stress herself. Nevertheless, she is still able to experience pleasant feelings.

The neuroticism described in the book is not any disorder or disease. It is one of the elements characterizing the emotionally unstable Hope, who suffers from mental noise caused by her internal conflicts.

The following pages of this book are devoted to Hope who tells her story and shares her personal experiences with you. The experiences that have made her the woman you meet today.

Why Hope?

When I created this story, a kind of psychotherapeutic story or even a case study, I thought that my heroine could not remain nameless. Finally, she received the name HOPE, as she is the embodiment of the word “hope”. Hope is still present throughout the content of this book. You can feel it among the flavours and smells recorded in the sensual memory of the girl. It even mixes with the smell of oranges.

Are you ready to become a guide of HOPE through her chaotic and messy world? How much are you able to stand? Do you want to understand her? How deep is your empathy? What are you ready to do for her? How much are you able to give?

Confusion

I’m here… and I’m waiting. Are you sleeping? I think, I’m awake now. Or maybe, I’m still dreaming… How to deal with all this confusion? It’s too much for one man. Far too much. Nothing can help… even staying together.

Certainty

I’m all alone… completely alone. I would like to talk to someone. Can you listen? Can you hear me? It is not about advice, help, or pouring out all my grief. It is about comparison. Comparing my thoughts with another way of thinking… It should be someone who is important to me. However, these important people disappear somewhere in the fog. Or maybe… am I disappearing?

It seems like a conversation training. It is like rehearsing before a performance. Just for the sake of peace of mind before confronting unfriendly people.

I know what I’m defending. I need to have my internal certainty. Then there will be neither time for questions, nor for people who will want to ask them.

A Theater

Life is a theater! I usually don’t give up so easily. This could be the beginning of change for the better. Sometimes changes hurt, but so does life invariably in such a situation.

I know what you are thinking… It always hurts at first. First, you need to cleanse the rotten wound. Then, it only heals.

I know, I know… It’s easy to say, but it’s harder to survive.

Change

Change for the better?… Maybe, it is worth grasping it… So it could be easier to survive.

Exhaustion

I feel dead-tired. I’m exhausted. Tired of existence, breathing, feeling, speaking, words, thoughts and everything that surrounds me…

Reset

I would like to disappear for a while. Just to disappear from all of this. There should be a button that would reset everything that has happened until now… But then our best moments would also disappear… so that’s not the best idea, right?

Can you hide me from the world? Can you hide me from people?

The Lost Day

A day has passed and will not come back. Another lost day. Maybe it’s better that it was lost on foolish things than on thinking. Recently, thinking has caused me more pain than usual.

Escape

What else do I want? All I can think about waiting… just waiting. Maybe it’s just a cowardly escape. Maybe, it won’t change anything. Or maybe, this whole storm is beyond my strength. I would like to say: “forget me”, but this only happens in poor movies. This place called Life completely stopped satisfying me.

Potato Pancakes

I want to feel the warmth of your hand for a moment. I like it when you smile. When you laugh… I like potato pancakes with olives. No one else eats potato pancakes with olives.

Fear

Not to be scared. Not to fear meetings, conversations, improvement. Not to be afraid of change.

Rain

You are disturbingly strange. It was raining again today. I got wet… I was cold. Don’t worry! Bath and hot milk will do me good. It’s just rain… completely harmless.

One Sentence

You know? You successfully turn the tap with oxygen off. You kill the remains of what allows you to live, but “nothing extraordinary happened!” One sentence, just five words, and it destroys my world. It was even extraordinary for me to eat this damn fish on the beach! (…)

And a lot of other little things.

If

It is still “if”, “if” (…) “if this…” or “if that…” Still this if and if… but it happened just like that… not the other way, and it happened at that particular time. My blunt brain doesn’t understand such love. I don’t know when I can say what I feel and when I shouldn’t speak at all.

Abyss

You ask me “what’s going on?” And I don’t understand anything… I don’t know what’s happening around me. I’m falling into some cold abyss and I can’t stop it…

Words

Do you think you know how I feel? I feel like a broken incubator which instead of saving my life becomes a coffin. Maybe, I could have tried better. Maybe, I could have taken care of myself more.

Do I have an obsessive tendency to mourn the loss? I constantly think about death. I’m afraid of death and I miss it at the same time. It’s hard for me to be among living people. The living are so active, noisy, talkative. There are no dead people. They are not physically present. Their heavy gravestones lie so peacefully arranged in even rows. At least, there is silence among the dead. Nice and quiet.

Words. It is difficult to express certain things with them. I was afraid, I’m still afraid. I had a life in me, and now I feel an abyss growing inside me. And nobody wants to talk about it. Maybe, they are also afraid. Or maybe, they don’t know how… Maybe, they can’t talk about their sadness. Maybe, they don’t feel sad because what I mourn for was too small or worth nothing… Or maybe, they just run away from death. They will not run away. In the end, death will get everyone in one situation or another.

I stay strong. Tomorrow is a new day, too.

Thoughts

Everything is upside down now. It’s too much for me. There are so many different thoughts reaching me…

I Am

There is nothing. There is nothing that I really possess here. There is nothing to come back to… but only rain and cold… I feel the coldest inside, inside my body… but I’m still there. How long can I take this? I don’t know.

Silence

Again, silence… It means quiet, it means silent. I don’t know what it means. Maybe, it’s the calm before the next storm, or maybe, everything calms down. I need silence. Nobody wants anything from me, nobody asks for anything. I’m invisible. It’s strange but even comfortable. I need silence and time. I need time for… I don’t know what, but I definitely need time for myself, space for myself, room for myself… May the dream bring silence.

Days

I dream that the day will end before it begins… Every day is the same. What does it matter, how many more days will pass like that?

Dead

Do you ever think about death? It’s just like death… You won’t hug it. You won’t touch it, and you will forget the smell and taste. Someone dies and is gone. He doesn’t think. He doesn’t have to make choices. He doesn’t dream. He doesn’t remember. He doesn’t feel longing or pain. This is how I feel right now. I feel dead.

Uncertainty

Nothing in life is certain. The sooner I learn it, the better…

Fog

I’m cold. Nobody hugs me anymore. Nobody touches my hair. Nobody looks at me. All these first things are gone. Nobody shakes beside me. I’m like fog.

To Be

Everyone has higher ambitions than a washer.

Chaos

I just want to endure the coming day. Maybe a week… I want a break from the clamour of everyday life… from chaos.

Solitude

It’s nice here… — rivers, forests, vineyards, ponds, bridges, benches… Hidden hermitage. I breathe. Finally, I’m breathing deeply. I would like to take this air with me. A green forest, clearings flooded with the sunrays… However, you can feel autumn in the air. I like autumn… autumn forest…

I would like to get lost in such a forest for some time.

Memories

Do I recollect? Yes. Memories give meaning to life and help us survive the next empty days.

Live

You said: “Live”… You know? — I try, sometimes better, sometimes worse, and sometimes it works…

Care

I can’t care about you when you are so far away. I can’t take care of myself. It is ineffective…

Wisdom

“The Wise” do not exist… I mean those who never need anything.

Dream

The only part of the day that was worth living… You smell good. I think you taste just as good. It’s like a dream in which I steal a bit of you for myself for later, a crumb after crumb…

Head On Transistors

It would be good to have a head on transistors. I mean a head that thinks about everything. I mean, it has to be vigilant, and the transistor probably works like this… It strengthens something there… Maybe not alertness, but some signal there… perhaps.

Dress

I was to leave home tomorrow and buy a dress I really like. But I wasted all the money. I spent it on drinks stronger than coffee… As you can see, I’m not an exception. I spend money easily, which I don’t have anyway… Yes, I know… I’m an idiot. As if that would change anything… It was supposed to be a dress for you… An empty girl in some miserable rag dressed for her man. Pathetic…

A Tramp

You dropped your eyes so quickly that I could barely see them. Only the wall separated us. You were eating and I couldn’t get myself together. How did I get there? Simply put, the city is for people, also for those who run away from their own shadow. I regret that I was wandering at all, that I saw your eyes, or that I didn’t see them… I wish I had wasted my money on drinks. I wish that I hadn’t fall under the truck. I don’t know what I regret today. Maybe that I’m so stupid and pathetic.

Masks

How to learn to live without masks? When you wear them for so long and change them often, in the course of time, you begin to identify with them, and then life doesn’t hurt so much. Or maybe, it’s just an illusion, because you want to believe it so much. Such an illusion, a veil of security.

It was supposed to be different from the very beginning. From the very beginning it was to be without bullshit. Without bullshit you are naked. Without bullshit there is no curtain you can hide behind. Without it you are exposed as if you were on a plate, on a shooting target. They know everything about you and they hit where it hurts most. The thing is, there are worse days when I can’t hide behind the mask… any mask.

Merry-Go-Round

I never liked merry-go-round… I felt sick. Life is like a roller coaster… with you, or rather without you…

The Same

You and me. Same as yesterday, same as before, but quite different. We are not always close. But what separates you from me in my heart?

Wall

There is a wall between us. The reality separates us from each other. It won’t succeed. Either we will stay in the shadow zone or… there won’t be us anymore…

Falling Apart

Something has happened inside me today… Something has broken and fell apart, and I can’t find all the elements. I can’t put them together. Something has happened today… I don’t know what. I’m sticking everything together.

Hold Hands

Can you lead me holding my hand like that? Can you lead me where I don’t want to go? Yes, you can. Because what else are they doing with me now? They lead me, still holding my hand, and although I do not want to, I obediently go… because I have to, because I have no strength to shout, because I lost myself along the way.

Road

They say the road is dust, gravel and compacted clay, gray streaks in the hair. The road is like a star trail made of gems connected by stone. The road is feathers of desire made of the Pegasus’ wings — a land where man faces his dreams. And I don’t have dreams anymore. Once again, I read all these “wise” words… and they dig in deeper into the skull… like nails that are too long.

Emptiness

Silence. To sleep through everything — the only thing that comes to my mind right now. Silence. Emptiness.

Nonsense

Sometimes I perfectly understand what is happening around me. I can find a justification for even the biggest nonsense I hear. But do I really understand? I don’t really understand anything, but it doesn’t matter… You may really get lost.

A Madwoman

They call me crazy, but they have good reasons. You haven’t considered that, have you? You haven’t even thought about it. No wonder you need time…

I haven’t felt normal for a long time. I don’t really know when I stop being normal. But I know when I’m normal again. I become normal again when I return from the land of madness.

Then I grin, writhing in pain. And everyone around tells me how great I look.

Negative