2016 was a tough year for you. Your long term relationship ended. You lost all your money and you were so cold that you had to burn your dreams to stay warm. And because of an injury on your right arm/shoulder/wrist you had to stop doing what you thought you loved most and what paid the bills, making music and performing.
Even your second love (writing) became increasingly hard because you had to learn to write with your left hand. Now you type with your left hand while the right hand rests, recovers and conducts your left-handed orchestra.
You started gymnastic strength training because it’s probably the only thing that can thoroughly fix your arm. All the experts and physio therapists and chiropractors and osteopaths are full of shit and couldn’t help you. You spent thousands of euros on their contradicting expert opinions and treatments and nothing improved. You know that like with western medicine in general, if you want to get healthy and fit, they cannot help you. You’re on your own.
Throughout the years you’ve hurt and betrayed so many people and burned so many bridges that you basically found yourself completely friendless, broke, suicidally depressed and lonely as hell. You were ready to just give up. But you still had hope. Like Bukowski once wrote, you wanted the whole world or nothing. Eventually you transcended these false gods and ascended to the heavens yourself and took over the controls.
You ended up in Mexico after a spontaneous decision to fly away from everything after a two week bender in Toronto where you had hoped to finally make it. Prior to that you had spent a few months in Amsterdam numbing yourself with drugs, prostitutes and excuses. Sin city swallowed you whole and spit you out to dry.
Your life became an endless loop of dead end dreams. You felt no different to all the other slaves running around this maze of modern society. This was not the rock star dream you signed up for two decades earlier when you were impressing your friends with the guitar solo to Enter Sandman. Where did it all go wrong?
In fact you were worse off because unlike them, you had nothing. Although deep in your heart you knew that your nothingness was your biggest asset because at least that kept you free. You were proud to be a nobody.
You just wanted to start a new life. You had tried to start one many times before but somehow always ended up in the same conundrum. You figured in your little brain that at least you wanna see the ocean before you die. You also had a friend who lived in the Caribbean. Viva la Mehiko.
And then you saw the ocean and you didn’t wanna die anymore. You realized that you didn’t ever really even wanna die. In fact, what you most wanted was to feel alive. And you were already dead. The person you used to be was already dead. You were a new person. This was a new story. Right then. Right there.
You knew that even though you had zero money left in your pocket, you were a billionaire. And thus you found your way back home. Welcome home Markus. We have been expecting you.