Retrogradation 2/2

Main Entry:
lapse
Part of Speech:
noun 3
Definition:
backsliding
Synonyms:
decadence, declension, decline, degeneration, descent, deterioration, devolution, drop, fall, recession, regression, relapse, retrogradation, retrogression

...You're treading a path I cannot follow you on...

So I'm online. All is well.

Except it's not.

In fact, things are about as entirely not well as they could be. Parts of it are of my responsebility, probably a majority of it. I've tired, though, to do the right things, and be the person I think anyone should strive for; Not a saint by any sense, but what I'd expect of anyone, to be a sensible person, acting by ideals governed by common sense and compassion.

Good intentions won't do the trick, though. And fuck for that. Just like neither compassion nor common sense will save anyone. Funny how hard that is for me to learn.

As last post implied, I'd like to belive it all started when my hard disk died. I can't say it was a sign of fate, rather a sign of "Fuck you, let's take what you've created, and kill it so you can't get it again!" - I hate the gods of irony and foresight, and if said deities are watching, here's a message to you; I hope you rot in your afterlife, you sadist parentfuckers. Melt in a fucking bonfire, and have a sidedish of pox, served lovingly witha special of terminal, spinal infection; I promise I'll be serving it for you in whatever afterlife awaits for petty gods of fickle fate and spite. Trust me, I'll do it a lot better than you when you're gone, bitches.

Now, that aside;

So it all started back then. My computer got back up and running. Things were supposed to be looking up, right? They were indeed.
My computer got back up and running late last thursday, and that's about the time where things started going really, really wrong.

Before I continue, I feel I must stress; This blog is purely egoistic. I write about myself, and only in vague terms refer to those around me. This is intentional, mildly to protect those that affect my life (writing them out of the wtory where I can avoid it), mostly because I don't feel tossing names on people I care for will improve this anyway. If you're reading this, chances are you're doing so because you for some reason want to know what's going on inside, and outside my head, not whom I spend my time with. That is *not* meant to belittle those that make my everyday worthwhile. It's simply because you have your own blogs where you can write about stuff I'm not part of anyway. And because I care about you enough to not drag your names down through my quagmire. Believe it or not, I'm doing it for you, not against you.

Below, I will make an exception, however, because I can't write about the past week without including it.

Friday comes, and I struggle myself to work much too early for my sensitivities. There was a friday bar (yay, first friday of each month!), and subsequently, I was looking forward to celebrating a friday evening for the first time in about two months. I've had a nasty tendency to have 14-22 shifts on fridays, which anyone'll tell you, lays a dampener on any party enthusiasm thereafter.

So, friday. Yay. Work until 18, get noticeably drunk at the company party, move party on to a local pub. Get more drunk. Colleagues old and new are there, things are fine, it's going to be one hell of an evening, tomorrow's work be damned.

Well, I was right. One hell of an evening, and tomorrow's work be damned both. Just...not entirely in the way I had envisioned it.



Text message isn't from someone I know. Not being a celbrity, getting text messages from unknown people always surprises me.

It's apparantly from my girlfriend's mother, at least what I read in the message.

By here, it's rather important to briefly explain that, on thursday, the 'Ungdomshuset' (Youth house) in inner Copenhagen had finally been stormed by the danish police. A seven year old strife over ownership rights was finally solved by (neccesary) means of official intervention. The place has, for over 20 years, been a gathering place for punk, alternative and generic misfit socializing. I've been there a few times. I didn't feel welcome, or fit in. Regardless, there is a major legal hassle as to whether the legal rights for clearing the building (where the ground, after tearing the place down, is owned by a secterian, christian cult of no little infamy)...So yeah...the youth's rebelling, and people are spilling into Denmark to support the cause.

On the day of the clearing, a demonstration was arranged. A peaceful demonstration, showing the dissatisfaction and disappointment with the city council's failure to solve the situation.

The demonstration gathered over 1200 people.

Of those, my girlfriend was one of.

As police deemed the demonstration getting too close to the then sealed-off building, they decided to dissolve the demonstration, as is their right.

Some people reacted unfavorably to this, and showed their dissatisfaction by means of propelled ballistics. Well, fucking rocks, what'd you expect?

The police reacted predictably harshly to it. And arrested over 70 people. Of which, the stone throwers were not present.

Over 70 peaceful demonstrators were arrested brutally by the police, for simply being in a demonstration that turned violent, that they could not get out of, even if they had heard the police formally calling to dissolve the demonstration. And if they had heard it, there was nowhere to go, the police had already boxed them in.

The stone throwers got away, to pillage another day. The nonviolent ones? Got put into strips, and arrested.

She was one of them. She would not even be fucking able to LIFT a stone, much less able to, nor willing to, throw it.

She was put into strips and detained for over 24 hours. She was deprived of any personal belongings apart from her clothes, including her anxiety-depressant medicine. She was put in a cell alongside 20 teenagers who had done nothing wrong.

She was put before a judge, just *over* 24 hours later (danish law states that you shall be placed before a judge *inside* 24 hours), having been in strips for a third of that timeShe haden't slept, nor properly eaten, and was about to collapse. In my mind I see her detained, crying and reaching out for me, and I'm not there, I didn't even know she was detained. I went about my job and everyday like nothing was wrong.

I get to the pub at around 22.30; I get set up with a beer and start preparing for a hefty night.
At 23.10, I realize I've recieved a text message. Previously, apparantly someone from hidden number has tried calling me. I check the text message, beer in one hand.

Reading the message, it tells me it's from her mother. It tells me she's just been released from detainment, and that she is coming home.

It asks me to do what I can to be there.

I almost make it there before her.

I make quick goodbyes to my colleagues who look bewildered, apparantly I am, in spite of being an emotional person, usually composed enough not make a scene.

I don't. I read the message, and turn to walk out.

I almost make it before her.

I arrive, reasonably drunk but with an adrenaline level that sobers me surprisingly; I remember guiding the taxi driver as good as any GPS system would hope for.

She's there. I can hear her crying from already before I open the door; not the "I scraped my knee" kind of crying either. She's crying like there is no curing the pain.

I never had a chance to prepare for it, either, drunk or not.

She's there. Crying. She's holding something. I can't really make out what it is.

I get into her apartment, and slip off coat and satchel and try to get my bearings, the warmth of the apartment making my glasses fog. I can't fucking see what she's holding.

But she's rocking back and forth.

I know it's not medically possible, but I would daresay that adrenaline will make you sober faster than anything else. Fear, panic and helplessness, incidentally, causes adrenaline production.

I span the two meters between us in a heartbeat, and find her cradling one of her rats.

...And it's not moving.

That, is about the point where things start splintering inside me. I may understand some of emotions, I may even understand how to curb sadness, but I am not experienced enough in this, I am not educated in this, I am neither sober nor strong enough to help her.

One of her pet rats had died while she was being detained for participating in a peaceful demonstration.

I know how petty and insignificant it seems in the grand scheme, but at that moment the dead rat was what broke my resolve. I simply could not take it.

I managed to get her to wrap the rat in cloth and place it somewhere cold, I got her, shivering and sobbing to bed, I excused myself to the kitchen, saying I was going to call her parents and let them know I was there, taking care of her. I even did complete the call.

And then it came apart. The alcohol, the worry, the sadness, the feeling of insufficience, the dead rat, the anger and the feeling of suddenly having gone an entirely other way than I had meant to, all came down over me, and I began choking on my breath.

I wasn't prepared, and in my egoism, I didn't feel it was fair. I could not do anything to make things better at that time, and when I started seeing clearly again, over ten minutes had passed.

I got her to bed, and called in to my teamleader, telling him in short terms that I'd simply not be showing up for work the next day.

Gradually, over the next day, she got better, a night's sleep helped. Food helped as well. Funny how grief and fear just needs tangible countermeasures to be kept in check.

She still twitches and grips my hand panically when a police car drives by. She still stares around her, looking for escape when she hears a siren far away. She is like a frightened animal, in spite of all her civilisation, and I don't blame her; but my sympathy does not lessen my anger, my sadness.

For I feel, that even now, proud and frightened as she stands, she has started down a path I cannot follow.

I can't protect her against the police. I can't protect her against the injustice, the bending of rules, or the cruel punishment that the police metes out off-screen.

I'm here, and I've built my entire life on the single principle that I would protect those I care for, from evil. And now I can't.

And that's when the anger kicks in.

When did I suddenly become the victim? When did the police lock me up for no reason? When was I slammed against a wall and forced into strips for something I had no part of?

I wasn't and yet I feel that it should rather have been me instead. Not because I want to be a martyr, or because I feel it'd better anything, but just to keep that one, vulnerable soul from the callousness of the state I live in.

...But she chose this path. I will respect that. She did not choose violence, but she chose, last night, to go to ground 69, the erstwhile pile of rubble that marks the last bits of the Youth house.

She's choosing her path.

And I see her walking in a direction that I can't follow.

So I stand here at the crossroad, and come to terms with that this is something I may not be able to abide with, that what I've already felt as a possible lack of emotion and devotion was indeed simply caring, not loving, and that now she's going a different path than me.

The seperation hurts, and I miss that part of her that won't be coming back now; and I am angry at her - WHY did she have to do this? Why should it have had to happen? Why should all this worry, fear and protectiveness all come tumbling down?

And at last, the question that keeps me up, when I try to sleep, cliché as it may be;

Did I comfort her because I love her, or because I worried for her?

What kind of person am I, regardless of the outcome? Can I even look myself in the eyes now, and say that I love?

I've stopped asking, because the answer frightens me more than the silence.

Retrogradation; Deterioration; regression; fall; lapse.