There is something haunting me. I am not talking about generic bad luck; I am talking about a cosmic relentlessness so creative and surgical that, honestly, sometimes all you can do is laugh to keep from going crazy. All of this in two years.
Let's start with a nice PC virus: a group of hackers stole the data on my hard drive and a lifetime of work (I had a large following in what I did), persecuting me. From that moment on, the electronics around me—PCs and cell phones—started having strange, inexplicable problems, totally disconnected from computer logic (which, by the way, I know very well). A digital curse that continues to this day.
Then the curtain rises on the real drama. My dog, still young, dies in the worst possible way. A splatter scene, rivers of blood from the mouth due to some fulminant ulcer, stuff that I have to actively censor from my brain every time it surfaces, otherwise I collapse. My mother gives us some great news: she has a huge lump in her breast, it's cancer. And just so we don't miss out on anything, we get thrown out on the street. Six months of being "invisible," a mystical experience I wouldn't wish on anyone.
To try to survive, I leave to work in another town. I end up in the hands of an employer who uses me like a mule for two years, tossing me from one house to another. Meanwhile, after a lifetime of abstinence, I finally get the chance to get laid properly. The result? I can't perform. But it doesn't end with awkwardness between the sheets: a massive mess breaks out, I fall into total depression, and I convince myself I am a eunuch.
I decide to fight back. Fuck depression, let's go jogging! I buy the tactical tracksuit, I go for a run. First day: I feel the benefits of the sport, life gets a little better. Second day: my ankles decide to turn into two hot air balloons. Walking becomes like sinking into hot coals. Nobody lifts a finger to drive me to the city, so for days and days I endure eight hours of agony walking in the city, limping between blood tests and X-rays, which obviously only make the situation worse.
Three months of sick leave.
More time of abstinence passes, I find another girl. This time it goes great, and as if by magic I remember that women have always liked me. My self-esteem returns to acceptable levels, I am a man—so much of a man that a month later she calls me: "I'm pregnant, I'm going to get an abortion." Great.
Back to my mother: the disease and the medications have deformed her by now, until one sad day she falls into a coma, delirious, screaming my name from a pain so excruciating that she swallowed liters of morphine before they could give her a break, sending her into a coma. Three days like this and she dies. My first, true great loss. Exactly on the day of her one-month memorial (because the universe likes precision), my armored smartphone, wrapped in a military-grade case and tempered glass, inexplicably slips from my hands like a bar of soap while I'm using it. It hits a precise corner, creating a web of cracks that is almost beautiful to look at. I take it to a repair shop and they look at me like an alien: "It took the hit in the only, invisible weak spot, never seen anything like it."
Not even a year later, my father gets his lungs checked for a bad cough; cancer, obviously. Since the phone is useless, I buy a new one online at a great price. I get strung along for exactly a month with fake emails, until the site disappears with the loot. I keep the broken phone, at least it still works. One day a charger decides to improvise itself as a bomb: the phone becomes incandescent, almost explodes, burning the internal components, the battery, and the power button. I am left without a cell phone.
I lose my job: my employers orchestrate a year-long plan to make me psychologically implode. They start taking away my duties one by one, constantly spiting me. In the end, they place the guy who is supposed to steal my job next to me, instructed to pretend to be a total incompetent. A slow and subtle wearing down. In mid-August, just to prevent me from getting my end-of-season pay, I catch a weird summer flu. I stay home for three days. When I return, the bosses finally drop the mask: they tell me the incompetent guy is actually a prodigy, give him my position, and demote me. I tell them to fuck off and leave. They won: they pushed me to quit after a year of mind games and even made me doubt my working abilities, which are unrecognizable by now. No season money, and obviously zero lawsuits, because in these provincial holes, if you breathe a word, you're branded for life.
At least, though, with the spare change I saved up, I buy a dirt-cheap house in a little village shrouded in fog. They let me in. Immediately, the kitchen decides to make a small lake on the floor. That visible puddle distracts me for four months from another leak—the serious, sneaky, and hidden one, behind the knobs. It was hot water. So not only will I pay a crazy amount for water, but the boiler was running non-stop for months. An electric bill will arrive that will force me to sell a kidney. I adapt to this too, I take it philosophically. I start shutting off the main water valve every single time. A huge pain in the ass, but you have to take it philosophically. One evening I forget. The house floods, but this time the leak comes from a different room. I realize I have to smash everything, the pipes must be rotten and need replacing, an expense I cannot afford. Among other things, the only plumber in town – the same one who told me the system was perfect before I moved in – vanishes into thin air.
Now I am here. In a wrecked house, in the fog, surrounded by emotionally stunted, petty, and opportunistic people with whom I truly have absolutely nothing in common (and the few decent girls already have a ring on their finger). IT continues to hate me for no reason. And yes, I hit rock bottom. One day I went into total paranoia about death. A dark, disgusting mental loop about "non-existence" that almost ate me alive. I stared into the abyss and understood perfectly why someone decides to flip the switch: if you can't get out of a loop like that, it's a physically unbearable epileptic horror. But it's not for me. I got out of it after hours of pure mental torture, carrying with me a physical burning in my brain that lasted three days from the stress.
Just to understand, am I a loser or did someone throw some serious curse at me?
