If life was a video game

If life was a video game

Beginnings and ends are the hardest things in life, so they say. I think about it when I’m alone. Lately I thought about it a lot. As long as we’re alive a beginning always means an end and an end always means a beginning. I don’t know if I’m happy about it. It’s something you can merely accept or not, like so many things in life. The past few years it was like I was playing House of the Dead with a crosshair out of sync and didn’t notice until the end battle. Now it’s too late to save anything from devastation. Everything is going to burn, including me and I’m tired of counting the seconds until it finally happens. I crush my last cigarette on the No Smoking-sign and take a step out of this cold reality. Inside the bad smell and used up air suck the oxygen from my lungs. For the first time in weeks I feel like I belong.
Everything around me blurs but the screens. Faces fade away, along with them their individuality and the threat they are. It’s as if reality takes a step back. It always happens unnoticed, yet I love that feeling. It’s like my eyes want to merge with the screens, the noise absorbs my ears. My senses feel alien for a moment, but not long and sweet numbness silences everything. I walk through the narrow isle to get an overview, see what’s new since my last visit. It’s been so long.
I’m probably double the age as the next oldest person here, but that’s not the reason for the looks they give me. I am a piece of reality, a splinter underneath their skin. No real pain, just discomfort. The presence of a world they wanted to abandon for a few hours. I feel with them. Every time my reflection stares at me, this feeling comes up like nausea. It slaps me in the face what I failure I am outside of these walls. If my life was DDR, I’d been missing three steps out of four. But the fourth would be perfect. And perfection is all the faceless crowds want to see - some to admire, but most to envy. I couldn’t fulfill their expectations, so they deleted me from their life. A strangely comforting weight in my palm, a handful of change, keeps me going right now. Every single coin can be replaced by another one.
I suddenly wake up from the two words that come closest to god in these halls – Game Over. Time passed since I entered. There are no clocks in this hall. She took my watch when she left my life. All of that seems so far away. No sense in returning into that abyss now. Keep busy. Split time into quarters, then you can control it.
Here you switch from one identity to the next within fractions of minutes. After being an assassin, you turn into a motorcycle racer or a prize fighter. You can lose as many lives as you want, yet walk away without a scratch. Virtual life is wonderful!
I balance my last quarter, the rest of my sanity, in the slot for a second. I shrug as I let it go and hear it tumble into the belly of this beast machine. I’ll give it one last shot. Now there is nothing left to lose.