Tales of a Gastarbajter

3...2...1...GASTARBAJTER!

Yaaay.

So what is a Gastarbajter? A Gastarbajter is a guest worker or a migrant worker in Germany, an "American dream" in Croatian version and a reason why Turks are 5% of German population (officially???) You see, migrant workers are supposed to leave when they finish their work but it seems that they kind of stick along for a long time or never actually migrate back. And what else is a Gastarbajter? Me.

I heard the word Gastarbajter many times ever since I was a kid in conversations of vast significance like: "Did you see his new Mercedes, nobody in the village or further beyond has one of those! Of course, he is a Gastarbajter!" or "Did you hear that Miroslav left Milenka and has a baby in Gemany? Of course, he is a Gastarbajter, they all do!" or do you know who builds churches in Croatia (except every fucking Croatian citizen)? - Gastarbajters! There was also a very strange situation when my friend googled red spots on his hand and Google said - AIDS! and he called me saying: "I think I might have AIDS, I bet it could be from Sanja, she was a Gastarbajter!" But apart from that, yes, it's an "American dream", except it's German. Actually Croatian. This doesn't make sense.

Gastarbajter Level: Spite

So I moved to Berlin. Without any money as I usually do. It seems that being an idiot is my legacy. I am just not sure from where. But every time I made a completely irrational decision (was there any rational ones?), it was also a lot of fun and I don't really regret any of them (OK, maybe some, along the notes - "The problem with last night is that it turns into this morning."). Albeit not the big ones. (Ha!) Quite quickly I found a job (and now I see why) as a Gastarbajter, following tradition of many many Croatian women since the 60s - in a hotel (we were never big on prostitution, it's more of a further east kind of thing). To be even better, since I don't speak German (except scheisse, I am good in scheisse) I work on breakfast and cleaning. And even better, I have a uniform! Yes, I have a uniform. A sexy purple apron for cleaning and casual black buttoned shirt for breakfast. And a bucket on which it writes Marijana. It makes me laugh every morning. And I must tell you, this getting rich with gastarbajter-ism is a matter of past. This will not be paying my bills much, which are astronomical since Gastarbajters like to have a lot of fun while they are gastarbajting in an open-minded foreign country where there is so many new things to do, many great people to meet and many tall men to see out of the house. And it is all super-legal not in human rights terms but in terms of documentation. When I said to my family that I am registered on German health insurance and social security and pension and whatnot (which actually means I am paying all this crap and waking up every morning at 6 thinking I miss the days when I was illegal) they were as excited as if I told them that I am earning millions. But my parents got used to this and just said Don't worry honey, you just started, you'll find something better and in the meantime go to visit all the doctors you can since it's free. So let me tell you about my first working days. So much of Ha! How funny is that! Then again, I can always find something funny. It's my superpower, making myself laugh. And I strongly believe that every single work experience is a good experience and it teaches you a lot. So what thoughts did I have so far?

1. "Cleaning" is a very relative term. And here we are talking about German clean. The first thing I noticed is that all the cleaning girls have super toned bodies and arm muscles you can usually see only on men. I thought maybe they are all doing sports. Until I started working. This is, my friends, full on physical exercise. It's not cleaning, it is exercise. There is about 3 hours from check-out to check-in where every little and I really mean every little thing has to be cleaned. Like moving around lockers that must weigh...I don't know how much they must weigh but I was pushing them today with my whole body for a while only to get them to move about a centimetre. And then again. And again. Until you move them enough to wipe the floor and surface behind. Or scrubbing with a little brush in between the tiles (I was singing "You're in the army now, ouou in the army" in my head while doing it which also reminds me of some happier times involving a soldier and a train). But anyway, all of the tiles, in all of the bathrooms. Minimum 10 of them per cleaner per day. And you have to be fast, like superman...superwoman fast. To be able to do that, everybody wears sports clothes and doesn't use gloves cause it would slow them down. The only girl that speaks English told me today that she lost 7kg in 5 weeks there. And also showed me her muscles. They were inspiring. 

Fuck off.

2. I am going to be super toned and I like it. So today I did physical exercise for 9.5h. 9.5 hours without sitting once. Ladies and gentlemen, give me a month more (if I don't get fired in the meantime) and I will be super muscley hot (random fact from Urban dictionary: "Muscley. Used by idiots who don't know the word "muscular". I've been pumpin my guns for ten weeks now, im so MUSCLEY!"). Like the other gastarbajter girls there. Except they are German. And a Romanian. And one doesn't speak so I don't know what is she.

One day I will look like a titless Brigitte Nielsen. 

3. I love exercise. If there is a goal to it. Like hiking. I hate gyms and aerobic and all that. I would rather do cleaning than go to a gym. Anytime. One friend every time she comes home from jogging says: "The sun is shining out of my ass!" I have always resented people that feel that way, it was always torture both for my body and my mind (what do people think about when they exercise?) but now I feel Wow, this actually feels great! And I can't even explain to you how much pain I am in right now, muscle pain, back pain and plenty of bruises. The fact I woke up at 5 and I have to tomorrow again doesn't help.

4. I already lost weight. I have the same weight as I did when I was 15. My Dad didn't take it as happily as I did though. Dad: You lost 10kg! Are you sick? Are you broke? Do you have some kind of mental issues? You never looked this bad! Me: Everybody tells me I look better now. Dad: They're lying. Me: It's my friends! Dad: Friends lie too! (My friend commented on this: He's right. You are broke and you do have mental issues.) Mum, on the other hand, is glad. My whole life my Mum was telling me I should lose weight and my Dad I should gain weight, usually at the same time and completely ignoring what the other one says.

No problem when you don't have any in the first place.

  

5. I understand German. All my cleaning and breakfast colleagues don't speak English so all the instructions I get are in German. Which I don't speak but I kind of do because I understood let's say 90% of it. And 10% usually goes very wrong. And it's fun. My favourite is when the butchy mohawk haired headcleaner yells from the end of the hallway MARIJAAAANAAA! And when I run there, she points at something that I don't even see and yells: FLEKEN! PUTZEN, PUTZEN, PUTZEN! SCHNELLER!

6. I get to wear a uniform. So the whole day I can pretend I am on a very elaborate costume party. 

Sure.

7. I am like Tom Hanks in Castaway. Except I have a bucket and it's called Marijana. And I am going to start talking to it, just for fun. And one day when I grow to the size of other girls, maybe I get a Marijana, my personal trolley.

Like in this video:
Marijanaaaaaaaaaaaa! 

8. One day I will be able to start training S Factor. I have a friend that was always bad in sports and hated it until she had to go to an army training to be an army dentist later on. And she absolutely loved it and now does sports for hours every day. Including S-Factor. Which is damn hard. I tried. No single way. For all of you uninformed it's striptease and pole dancing without actual stripping but with pole dancing. It's very big in Croatia (not surprised, are you? Once I asked a German guy that I was with at that time, what would his mother say if she knew I was Croatian. He said: Use a condom.) Anyway, so maybe I start to love exercise so much that one day I can be a pole dancer. Although I think I am too big for that. Like I was too fat to be a ballerina according to my Mum. Well, anyway, we have to dream big.

9. I have to wake up at five. Four to five days a week. Which means I will go out less. Which means I will drink less. Which means I will do less stupid things...No, it doesn't. Since I am still going out as I usually do (but not Istanbul kind of usually) the other day I even managed to pass out for the first time in my life. A proper "what the hell happened" pass out. Luckily, I passed out right on my bed and woke up 10h later just in time for work. Convenient.

Blow my puff and make a wish. 

(dandelions) 

10. I am so going to get fired soon. Since I don't know yet little tricks how to do things faster, I am slower than others. But I am really really fast and doing my best. Honestly. But everybody is still faster so I try to cheat. But they really seem to catch me every time. And then I play the immigrant card. But there must be tricks. So I have to make friends, make them all love me and find out the tricks. Which is a bit tricky since I don't speak the language. It's hard to manipulate people when you don't speak the language. And the other problem - they are German and I don't know how to make Germans love me. Yet. So I will start tomorrow with the cheapest Croatian trick possible - mito i korupcija aka chocolate. A box of finest Croatian chocolate should melt even German hearts. I will keep you posted.

Oh Husnu, the creator of Kooperatif

I found this text one day in my flat and remembered I wrote it once when I was, let's say - a little bit tipsy:

Kooperatif bar was a small bar on a narrow, snaky street on the European side of Istanbul. It was the only bar in Istanbul where you wasted no energy on rational conversation and tipped the waiters to be treated badly. How and why it came to existence, nobody knew for sure - a lack of knowledge magnified by the fact that there was nobody literally nobody and nothing inside this place that a rational observer would describe as "sense".

 

The real reason why the bar existed, against all odds, was because this spot in space was nothing but a figment of a certain cat's flawed imagination. The bar was a fictive place with fictive people as the regulars. Sometime ago Husnu, the notorious street cat, as a part of his new project "Get yourself a home", started thinking about this place, thus breathing life and chaos into it but before long he had gotten distracted by far more important projects - street fights, eye-catching felines and the new kebab place on the corner. Amid these hectic times he had eventually forgotten this dingy hole in Istanbul, the existance of which he was solely responsible for.

As a seed planted to the ground Kooperatif developed a life of its own and under the weight of musical events attracted strangers of dubious existance. Husnu, on the other hand, found it very convenient after a set of unfortunate events that included loss of testicals, to stumble upon his very own creation that fortunately included water, food and occasional shamans.

Ever since then, the customers and waiters in Kooperatif bar, a small bar on a narrow snaky street on the European side of Istanbul, had been struggling with a sense of nonsense, digging away at disconsolate future scenarios, grimacing over teacup plates served as ashtrays, waiting for a purpose in some highbrow drama wherein they would play the leading role.

Still, every now and then, someone new to the place or in need of drawing attention would come forward with another theory and for the ephemeral lull the other customers would believe him, toying with the new theory, until they got bored and sunk back to their marches of relative existance.
Among all the theories on the genesis of this bar, this explanation was the most plausible.

Happy birthday Husnu!

Disclaimer:
It was based on some other text but I forgot which one. But it could be something from Elif Safak.

Running down the dream

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it’s in my basement, let me go upstairs and check.

I was walking down the street and I saw It. Stephen King's It, not a guy wearing a clown costume but the very It. So I yelled: "Hey, man, how are you? Haven't seen you since we worked together! I am going to the Folk the floods concert for Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia tonight, why don't you come along?" It responded: "No, people will stare at me, I am a clown." Me: "Nooooo, this is Berlin, you can be whatever you want to be, nobody gives a shit!" It: "OK, maybe you're right, see you tonight!" And It left and I was thinking: "Wow, he is quite tall, I wonder how he looks like under the mask..."

Unfortunately, It never came to the concert and I didn't have a chance to check It under the mask. When I explained the dream to my friend, she said I should never use drugs. And maybe should go to a psychiatrist. I remember my dreams almost every day and most of them are insane. I don't need to go to a psychiatrist though. A random fact - if you ever wanted to google your crazy dreams to check if there is maybe something wrong with you, don't. In the end of the session, you will have cancer or brain tumour. The same goes for Cramp in my left arm. Or A red spot on my face. 
Anyway, apart from the brain tumour, there is nothing wrong with me. It's you. It's not "It's not you, it's me." It's "It's you, it's not me." You just can't remember. As I cannot remember things that happen in reality. But I have Aleksandra (a non-drunk that parties like one) and Lana (a drunk that remembers like non-one). And you don't get anyone in your dreams. Ha-ha! 

So here is a (not so) short list of popular themes, almost but not particularly in that order of preference but No. 1 is definitely No.1. 


10. Body and Mind

I have a few separate entities that drive my dreams and they are all on drugs. There is Body and there is Mind. Body usually appears as a voice telling me to eat fruit, or drink water, or eat spinach, or "Marijana, you have malaria!" (and I wake up with 30 bites). On the other hand, Mind is a problem-solver that tends to be obsessed with my fears and puts me into situations where I am completely freaked out like walking down a broken rope bridge thousands of meters up in the air or jumping of a cliff or doing a speech in front of hundreds of people or touching a spider. And while it is happening, it is telling me to calm down and that everything will be fine. Fucker.

9. Conscience
And then you get Conscience. Like this week. First I dreamt that it is important to sleep as less as possible cause every moment will be shorter in time and there will be much more of them and their importance will be much greater cause they all act as pieces of an infinite puzzle in the future and the more pieces you fill in, the more...I don't know what happens but it was important to fill in the puzzle as much as possible. And then a few days later I got a better explanation. Very simple. If you sleep a lot it means that you consider your dreams better than your reality. In that case, your reality will definitely be worse than your dreams. But if you start to sleep less making your mind believe that reality is great, the reality will turn out great. And all that elaboration because I felt guilty for sleeping too much. And I wasn't even stoned.

8. Nothing but trouble

Troublesome dreams occur when I am not as happy as I usually am (duh!), just to make things extra worse so not only that I am looking for a job and not finding it in reality but I am also looking for a job and not finding it in my dreams. You can also get tear gassed by Turkish police during the day and then some more during the night, with extra police brutality sequences in the dream. Or was it in reality? :D
Trying to escape from talking walls that are trying to crush me, that was fun. Although someone explained to me in the dream that you have to treat them nicely and they will go away. Talking walls. 

If walls could talk: Xena and the blond girl clips with Celine Dion in the background. Never knew!

7. Apocalypse 
I am Brad Pitt, Bruce Willis and Will Smith, all in one. Different versions of apocalypse are reoccurring, so I punched zombies in the face many times, went to Norway to watch a timed tsunami that will make human race extinct, stole chicken legs in a supermarket after the floods that killed 90% of humanity (they would go bad soon), fought in war many times (on different sides, never Croatian) and lived in post-apocalyptic scenarios without water, electricity and sewer. Ah no, wait, that was in India.  

And this is not India. Or apocalypse. This is Brighton.

6. Travelling

Travelling and hitch hiking are the most common dreams when I am stuck in one place. So I travelled all around the world, lived in hippy communes in Italy, had babies in Brazil, lived in a tree house, went on a sailing vacation with 10 transvestites and took numerous one way tickets. And even in my dreams I have that moment "Shit, I am doing it again. Poor mum. My dad will kill me." Guilt imposed by parents runs deep down. 

5. Elaborate sex dreams

A small digression - I once read in a Yoga book that for every affair we have, we will be reborn to satisfy that person throughout a marital life. Scary, ha? I found it really funny (and disconcerting) so for a couple of weeks I was saying this to every yoga person I met (it was in India, so I must have said it hundreds of times) but nobody got particularly upset. But I guess it was a wrong kind of crowd. Worrisome as it is, add to it all the people and...stuff you had "affairs" with in your dreams. Ha! Now, that's unpleasant. So yes, sex dreams. Usually unwanted. Just imagine my dreams you have read about so far and add a pinch of sex in it. Very disturbing is what you get. With a few exciting exceptions. A small advice: Don't google "Weird sex dreams, am I normal?" You will get pregnancy in results. And cancer, of course.

4. WTF Marijana
But the ones that I love the most are the most absurd ones, the ones that make me think - WTF. Some of them the best experience I have ever had. Like when I was time. This is written correctly, I was time. Or fighting Voldemort: I yelled all the spells properly (I actually do know them!) and nothing worked and Voldemort laughed and said: Don't you know little girl that the spells have to be in Turkish? 
Or getting a TV from a three eyed Gypsy woman where I could watch my life and future and it even had options on the remote control like The happiest moments,The saddest moments, Most important people in your life and so on...And then an Australian girl stole my TV. 

3. Lucid Dreaming

And then you get the lucid dreaming (or don't). Oh. For those who don't know, in lucid dreams you are aware that you are dreaming and YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT TO DO. Yaaay! Like the best date ever (I'm talking about flying, visiting hundreds of places and kissing on top of Himalaya that I found a bit too cold and turned it into spring time. And I also got to choose how the guy looks like). Beat that. And flying in general. Although sometimes it can get a bit inconvenient if you are in the middle of it and forget that it is a dream and you think "What is happening here, I am not supposed to fly..." and you start falling. And jump of the bed in shock. Or you dream you are a squirrel. And forget you dream and realise you have no idea how to be one. It is not easy being a squirrel. There is a lot of things that eat squirrels. And there are other squirrels. And it is all fun and games till someone gets raped. 

2. Animals
Animals are a big part of my dreams in general, I am cuddling with spiders, riding dragons, taking care of talking cats, swimming with polar bears and my dog Aslan usually takes on human characteristics like doing hostel shifts in stead of me (and I just switch of the alarm and oversleep) or following me in a shape of a midget jester. Once I dreamt that I died and came back as a cat. My mother knew it was me but my father put her into a nuthouse. So I went to my friend Darija. She loves animals so she would take me. One day I saw that the computer was on and Word was open. So I started typing with my paw and managed to write Marijana Mustra. And I wrote some more. And I started answering her questions. And long story short, everybody knew it was me, my mum was out of the hospital and would visit me from time to time (it was still a bit hard for her for obvious reasons), everybody was bringing me cat food and I was on TV. And I didn't have to be raped by other cats. It wasn't so bad after all.

1. God
And if you ever wondered what God thinks, imagine a vast green field and a cliff among the clouds and you are watching the whole world down. And now imagine God is sitting next to you:

God: World is a cruel place. 
Me: Why do you think so? 
God: Cause David Bowie never got an Oscar.

And for the end, a small piece of advice: Do google "I am talking to God, am I normal?"

Cause you'll get THIS.

And cancer, of course.


Sweet dreams, good night and don't let the bed bugs bite.
Or penises for that matter.

Que sera sera

♪ ♪ ♪ When I was just a little girl, I asked my mother: 'MUM CAN I BE A BALLERINA?' and she said: 'NO, HONEY YOU'RE TOO FAT!' ♪ ♪ ♪ Que sera sera...

I was a weird kid. My imagination was constantly interfering with the reality and it was very hard for me to decipher which is which. I also believed in magic, princes on white horses, talking animals, witches, dolls being alive (one of them trying to kill me), Jesus listening to my prayers and a happy grown up world where one day everything will make sense. Once I painted all the walls of the living room and yelled: Mum, look, chickens!' I also said to her many times that I discovered the meaning of life and once I told her that I ate some of my small toys. They took me to hospital to figure out I hadn't. The problem was I wasn't lying. I was completely sure I did.
Now I am 30 and things haven't changed much. Except the Jesus part.

At some point of my childhood, I asked the ultimate question: 'Mum, where do babies come from?' Mum being a very rational mathematics professor answered: 'When two people fall in love, babies come.' There was no storks in her story. I gave it a thought (I very often dwell upon strange things people say to me and it can last for hours until I proofread it to suit my view on the world: 'Could that be true? If not, do I want it to be true? If yes, what's in it for me?') and I realized - Shit (or whatever equivalent was at that time), the baby is coming!

You see, I was terribly in love with a boy from my kinder garden and Mum said when there is love, there are babies. Of course, I completely ignored the fact that I didn't know if he is in love with me. I wasn't ready to be a Mum so I cried in my room the whole day: 'I am too young, I am a child, how can I raise one, there was supposed to be this whole life ahead of me before babies and above all - MY FATHER WİLL KİLL ME!' In the evening, I came to another conclusion: 'It is over now and I will do it. And if my parents love me, they will accept it. It wasn't my fault, you can't stop yourself from falling in love. And if they don't accept it, I still have my little red suitcase and I will put a towel and soap (it is important to have some basic hygiene) and my favourite doll and I will go away. There must be some work out there that I can do...I WAS 4 YEARS OLD.
When I told my mother, she cried. Nothing much has changed. She still does from time to time, for different 'What the hell is she doing now?' reasons. I still make my decisions in 'Well, what's done, it's done' and 'MY FATHER WİLL KİLL ME' fashion. I am always ready to pack my little red suitcase although I am not that eager on hygiene any more. I still ignore the fact that I don't know if people love me, as long as I love them it's all good (I'm OK. You're OK.). Definitely I am still not ready to raise a child and I strongly believe that there is this whole not so adult life ahead of me without children but I also know now that babies are not that eager to come by (or at least I take care of their non-arrival) and that love comes and goes very nonchalantly.

I also don't fit in any of these categories. Yet.

The world was very confusing when I was a child. Many things puzzled me like how can there be iron in lettuce, why refugee kids have flees, why all the women in Bible end up badly, why Jesus doesn't want to talk back to me, why kids can't drink beer, why every adult I know drinks it, why Tooth fairy doesn't exist in Croatia, why old men have pregnant bellies and so much more. I also imagined that one day when I will be 30, I will be a mathematics teacher happily married to a handsome boy and have two kids and a dog. I wasn't supposed to have short hair cause girls don't have short hair, or live outside Croatia cause Croatia is the best country in the world, or travel for no apparent reason cause Croatia is yes, the best country in the world.The only worthwhile travel was if you are something like Indiana Jones, that's acceptable. There was only one Love of your life. And you should always be a lady. HA! My father still strongly believes that I will change and become normal again. But he also blames Turkey that I became a vegetarian. Exactly. Sometimes I think making no sense is in my genes. But then I take a look at my friends and they don't make any sense either.

When I became teenager, it got even worse. A completely different set of questions rose up to the surface, my personal favourite being 'Why and how are some people cool and some bullied and how to avoid being in the latter category?'. A nice quote on how: 'I’m talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn’t them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad it wasn’t them that they were throwing just as hard as they could'. Same rule applies to burning at the stake, guillotine and classroom. Furthermore, why you are not allowed to have same shirt like somebody else, why Adidas is always cool and Nike is cool only if they are black, why cool people don't have pimples (life, you must be joking me), how to stalk somebody, why is everybody so deformed all of a sudden and what deformations are cool. Boobs are cool but you get harassed by boys a lot. Moustache is not cool. You won't get stalked by girls.

You get self conscious and nothing on your body is as it should be. I was as tall as now, weighed 20kg less and covered myself as much as possible cause I thought I was fat. And nobody ever could persuade me different. Social structures and group dynamics were really giving me a hard time, I never understood why everybody is so horrible but on the other side, I became as horrible as them. Better than being bullied. And when it all got mixed with a healthy doze of hormones it became THE WORST PART OF MY LİFE THAT I WOULD NEVER EVER EVER REPEAT. All that hormonal confusion and puberty and world is a bad place (yes, I had that phase as well) and not knowing what you are and what you belong to and searching yourself in different music, clothing and groups of equally confused people that pretend they are not confused and blaming your parents and all the I'm in love nonsense on top of it...Wow. Never again. Thank god. Hallelujah! No wonder teenagers drink so much, it's impossible to deal sober with all this. No wonder adults drink so much either.

In early 20s I discovered LOVE, proper full on Love of my life kind of love and that dreamy girl from the beginning of the story was the happiest person in the world. A bit later on, I discovered that love goes away and that there is not one Love of your life, there is Many of them. If you're not unlucky. 

I discovered travelling which also gave me this amazing feeling of being the happiest person in the world. Travelling then turned into hitch hiking which turned into not following peoples' expectations which turned into not following career which turned into not having any money which turned into not caring about your looks which turned into not acting 'normal' which tuned into having damn good life all along (until someone tries to touch you, that's not so damn good). 

Of course, there are always bad times. There will always be bad times no matter what you do. For example I am worried today the whole day (apart from the latest When the hell will I get a job) that I might have adopted some bigger creatures in my stomach while I was in India and I have this feeling in my guts that they are on a nuclear fission level of civilisation now. (Not so) funny stuff happen sometimes.   

 Trucks, love and parasites. Not necessarily in that order and hopefully not correlated.

So que sera, sera, the future developed quite expectantly unexpected. When I think about all these crazy things I was asking and thinking when I was a child and teenager, the only thing I can say to my parents: 'You should have seen it coming. You should have seen right there all the trucks and crazy people and faraway countries and wasted nights and non-approvable boys and fake marriages and deportations and uncertain clothes and adopting dogs and quitting jobs and riding a horse down the cliff on Caucasus with a toothless cross-eyed old man tried to kidnap me or whatever else I considered magic in that very moment. And you should have seen how much happiness, joy and love I will feel and will be surrounded with.

On the other hand, maybe I will also be broke, sick and lonely when I am 40. So ask me then again.
Que sera, sera.  

And a completely brilliant video.

So this is a song for the brokenhearted (♪POW WOW♪) PART2

As a reminder, these are advice for brokenhearted people based on 10 commandments, from a 30yo silly woman that definitely shouldn't be giving advice. And if you ever wondered how I got this amazing opportunity to be the Visionary for the Man in the sky, this is how:

(so I beleıeved Him and we shared manythg)

6. You shall not murder.

Yes, please don't.

7. You shall not commit adultery.

 Well, it's too late for that, isn't it? :D Anyway, let's put it like this You shall not commit adultery against your heart. I am now taking a ciggy brake to laugh my ass off on what I just wrote....OK, let me go further. You might want to now find a new guy as soon as possible to substitute for the last one or find as many guys as possible to replenish your ego. Well, if you are sure it will make you feel better, sure, go ahead but most likely you will make some bad choices and wake up next to a person you really don't want to wake up next to. And then you will have to do the morning after small talk thinking how stupid this now feels and what were you thinking (or what was tequila thinking). Try finding somebody you actually like, not some drunk asshole just to have a one night stand as soon as possible and make yourself feel better. And trust me, been there, done that, it doesn't work.

8. You shall not stalk.

Erase his number, erase him from facebook, erase all the messages, phone calls and emails. It will keep you away from drunk texting or god forbid sexting. If you have this silly deal that you stay friends, well, don't. At least for a while. Remove him from your life. Explain that to the guy. If he ever loved you, he will understand. If he didn't, well, than you should erase him anyway. It would be great if we had (in a deep villain's voice) this magic button that we press and a person disappears so you don't have to think what is he doing now and what gorgeous girl he is sleeping with and how great his life is now because he doesn't exist any more. But then there would be probably no one left out here. (And the earth would flourish and all the plants and animals would live happily ever after). Anyway, you can't do that because we already went through the 6th commandment but what you can do is to throw out everything that he gave you and that reminds you of him. It's just stuff anyway. You have your memories. Of course, don't throw useful stuff. For example I just threw away a towel, some bracelets, erased the photos, the music that we listened to (there is anyway so much more great music) and well, some other more...let's say...private stuff I got. But I kept the USB stick.

9. You shall not bear false thoughts against reason. 

So you are brokenhearted? Feel free to join our club! It is called EVERY SINGLE PERSON ON THIS PLANET (that doesn't have more important things to worry about) club. And you get to drink more beer with a good excuse. Every single person no matter how perfect it is will at some point for one or the other reason be brokenhearted. OK, let me paraphrase it - every single person that has a heart. I know a lot of Germans that don't. (Sorry. It's funny.) And for every person there will be somebody who doesn't love them. We can't make people love us. There is nothing you can say or do to make somebody love you. If you think, I should have been more like this and this...nope, wouldn't help. And first you have to realise: HE DOESN'T LOVE YOU. And don't wait for him cause HE NEVER WILL. But somebody else will.  Remember that. And keep on walking (Johnny)

10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.

I don't know what to say on this but yes, please don't. The guy is not worth coveting your neighbour's donkey. Or male servant. I don't know what covet means and I don't want to check because it sounds in my head very sexual (that's new...) and by this really funny. You see, nonsense humour always helped me. And black humour also. You can always laugh at your situation, if you have some kind of humour. I know a a lot of Germans that...OK no, I am not doing it again. Just laugh how fucked up you are and how meaningless it is. And you must have heard it a million times, but yes, it could be much worse. It was a tradition in my home that my father always says if I can't finish my food - what about all the hungry kids in Africa. I always found it very absurd - OK dad, give them my food. But the fact is this is all first world girl's problems. And you should be grateful how great life you have. (I also always wanted to bomb the house of every person that said this to me when I was bad but it is a fact).  

...you could have been a sheep during bayram

So this is it then. It is difficult, difficult lemon difficult and nobody can help you. And nobody ever will. You can see thousands of motivational movies and hear thousands of times how amazing you are and how everything will be all right from your friends but I can guarantee you, it won't be all right. Not until you make yourself all right. Or time makes you all right. So just laugh yourself through and it will be over in a second.

P.S. By reading this post, you agreed that you will not hold me responsible for any misfortune you had based on my advice. 

10 commandments in progress

So this is a song for the brokenhearted (♪POW WOW♪) PART1

It might get even worse...

Since I wrote my heartbreaking earthshaking post how utterly sad I was and how everything turned out all right in the end and the fluffy creatures came back, I got a lot of messages how it made people laugh but it also made them cry. I had no idea that there actually was so many brokenhearted people in the virtual reality of my facebook and especially that they read all this nonsense that I am writing. As I wrote in the post I have this magic ability to attract sad people looking for advice although I am completely incompetent on giving one and most likely very bad for their health. But also a lot of you asked me what do I do to make myself feel so much better so soon and move on happy go lucky bullshitting along the yellow brick road so I decided to write down (yaaay I can write something again yaaay) my useless advice and save it for future reference. Next time someone asks me, I am sending the link. And I really want to see if I can pull this off.

So let's start. I chose 10 commandments for this since it already has a tradition of generating complete bullshit. And because I find it funny. Religions always are.

1. You shall have no other gods before yourself.

Nobody is better than you. And you are not better than anybody else. We are all just monkeys that eat and piss and walk around acting absurd and saying nonsense. And at some point in their lives these monkeys look around and see that another monkey has something else that they don't. And they feel less of a monkey. And they think another monkey is better than them. Life is so much nicer when you stop comparing monkeys. You are your own god and gods get the power from belief in them. Nobody is going to believe in you, they might say they are but they are just monkeys, what do they know. So don't go around feeling small and worthless. You are small and worthless but you are not any smaller and more worthless than anybody else so why feel like this. No matter how many times you got dumped.

2. You shall not make idols.

No, there was never a holy spark of light above his head and he is not handsome even when he is shitting and he is definitely not the smartest/funniest/most capable person out there (what else do women want?) oh and his penis is definitely not the best and it wasn't the best sex you have ever had and you never will with anybody else. If you have a functional body, you probably have at least 50% sorted out (it is a physical reaction after all) and there are people out there that you will have a mental connection with as well. You are not special. Or you are but just like everybody else. He is not the best person in the world. (If he was, he wouldn't be with you in the first place.) There is plenty of fish in the sea. And sharks and whales. And octopuses for that matter. I had a discussion once with one drunk guy in the hostel at 5am (it was my night shift so didn't have much choice) about how many times you can fall in love. He said Once. I said More! And I promised that the next time I fall in love I will send him an email. (Later he attacked me in the storage room but that's a completely different story). I still have his contact so I invite all of you to spam his brains out every next time we fall in love. Maybe "my heart has more rooms than a whore house" but I am sure everybody has, you just have to keep the door open.

3. You shall not take the name of the PROBLEM in vain.

So you wake up and think about how horrible your life is and you go to sleep thinking it is even worse. You are constantly talking about it. You keep repeating to yourself that you feel so miserable that it is absolutely impossible that you will ever feel better. You have dialogues in your head saying to yourself or others how useless and dark your situation is. You are making your problem grow every single second that you give your attention to it. And it is hard to shake it off once you are in this circle. So let's play a game. Imagine you are a ping pong ball. (once they told me on a stage fright therapy that I should just imagine I am a tree. I wanted to bomb the school.) Imagine everybody is some kind of flying object. So you have light and flexible objects and heavy ones. Every object will hit the ground eventually, ping pong balls will just bounce off and massive rocks will crush the ground even deeper. What defines which object you are is what you have in your head. I mean how much heavyness there is. So now, go on, think about your problems and crash the ground. It's your own fault.

4. Remember the nice days, to keep it holy.

I heard many times I wish I never met him and so on. No, you don't. In this bad moments everybody concentrates on all the shit that happened in the end and pain they feel at that moment and forget about all that absolutely wonderful, amazing, mind-blowing moments you had before that you would definitely re-live, even if it means you have to re-live the end as well.. There was no happiness in my life that i wouldn't repeat again even with the cost of extreme sadness later on. And this amazing moments will always be with you, like the best travel you had or the tastiest food you tried, you had a great moment with a person. Now, leave it and have some more other travels and food...and people. This is turning into a self-help blog.

5. Honor distractions.

It's all about time and not thinking about the pink elephant. With time any elephant will leave no matter how pink it is. In the mean time, distract yourself. If you can, go travelling. Travelling will heal any tortured soul, it is just too much input and there is no space left for the elephant. Go dancing, go partying. Don't drink too much in bars that are not fun for you, you will just end up crying on some guy's shoulder that might think you want to have a rebound sex with him (or as I once said drunk - a rebounce sex). Surround yourself with people, as many people possible. Call friends you discarded - Remember me? I was your friend when I didn't have a boyfriend. Meet new people, go to courses, events, join online dating (don't if you live in Turkey. Or Balkan countries)...Every person can teach you something you didn't know before and so on.
And look great! If you don't like yourself in the mirror (more than usual), you won't like yourself anytime soon. 

...to be continued...

P.S. By reading this post, you agreed that you will not hold me responsible for any misfortune you had based on my advice. 

P.P.S. I can't check does it make sense or how many millions of mistakes I made cause I can't see shit anymore. I think it is time for glasses. 

And then if it all works out, you can end up on a picture like this.

And your whole life will all of a sudden make sense.