Bear With Me

von Marcus Krug

 

Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most. No, I haven’t. I have yet to lose it. Which I wouldn’t mind. It would make things much easier.

I lost something different. Something I wouldn’t be able to find with the help of anybody. I must find it myself. What I’ve lost, can be named, but hardly described. I can only describe its absence. So please, bear with me.

 

“Daddy, read it in the hollow and affectless voice of a man who has nothing left to lose.” my daughter said to me the other night, when I was reading her favourite bed time story to her.

“Why would I do that, darling?” I asked her.

“Mummy says that this is what you can do best.” was her innocent reply.

And then two or three weeks ago, my millennial girlfriend snatched her phone from the bedside table in the hotel room and took a picture of me right after we had sex. I asked her why she had taken the photo. Her reply was simply that I had been caught speeding. I came too quick, she added. Then she threw herself into the pillows and pretended to sleep, facing the wall away from me, sulking.

Then there is this disturbing news that the world’s two ugliest men – judging by their extraordinary hairdos – Kim Jong Un and Donald J. Trump are probably going to meet to do some problem solving, initiated by the latter. But I won’t to be around to see this happen. I can’t bear all this nonsense any longer.

Whenever things do not run well for me, then I like to contemplate the fascinating phenomenon that there are girls out there who won’t have any eyebrows left, once the rain sets in.

But that wasn’t enough this time, because a little less than two weeks ago, I had a serious meltdown. I filed for divorce and left the sole custody for our daughter to my future ex-wife.

I also met with my lover for the last time. Her hair dyed pinkish-grey, and the so-called mom-jeans and granny shoes she was wearing, made it all the easier for me to dump her. It seemed that she completely exhausted her emotional capacity by putting an 😥 emoji in her Facebook status and left the room without a word.

Earlier that day, I had also taken out a loan. It wasn’t much I needed for myself. But some money for the child support, until my daughter turns eighteen. And just a little bit for my last trip. Not that I’m going to die any time soon. No. But I went on a cruise.

Shortly after Skagway, on the way back to Juneau, I left my cabin in the middle of the night, went up to the top deck and released one of the big life boats out of the mounting. It – with me in it – jumped overboard, but landed safely in the icy waters. With me on board, I had taken a smaller inflatable life raft. You never know when this could come in handy.

Back in the civilisation, I had also stocked up on any kind of seeds they had in the DIY markets. Here in the wilderness, I have put the seeds into the ground, hoping that they will sprout soon. Currently, my diet consists mainly of berries and mushrooms and the odd inattentive squirrel, every now and then. I’m not saying that those aren’t good for you, but I have noticed that there are some unmissable side effects to this rather restricted nourishment.

Now I’m here on what I believe to be an uninhabited island somewhere along the coast of Seward’s Folly. I have moored the life boat from the cruise ship in a small bay on the far side of this islet. My side of the island I share with a family of nasty racoons. They occasionally interfere with me gathering mushrooms and berries. On the other side of the islet lives a sounder of wild boars. They sometimes come over and raid the patches I’ve put out with all the seeds to sprout.

I’ve also put up something that would have qualified for a barn if only I had been a child. It hardly provides any shelter from the sometimes rather torrential rain. But apart from that I’ve finally found what I was looking for – my peace.

 

Today I set out to fetch the raft from the life boat on the far side of the island – to patch up my shed. I’m on the way back, now. Under my left arm, I’m carrying the inflatable life raft. However, the yellow package unfortunately unfolds as it hits a couple of tree trunks while I’m zigzagging hastily through the thick woods. With the formerly wrapped-up package unfolding, I almost lose grip of the expanding bundle. In the very last moment, I get hold of a red tag. This very tag is attached to the release cord which is unfortunately the trigger to eventually set the life raft’s self-inflation process in motion. The yellow raft explodes into the limited space between the close trees.

As I don’t let go of the red tag, my arm is being pulled back when the big and round life raft gets stuck between the trees. In no time the boat expands right behind me, preventing me from bumping into … let’s just call it unexpected wildlife.

If my cell phone still had juice and coverage, my last message would probably have been something along the lines of “Help! Bear with me!”