I think even this single thing is enough to explain the state I’m in: instead of going on vacation to rest, I dream of going to prison.

 I think even this single thing is enough to explain the state I’m in: instead of going on vacation to rest, I dream of going to prison.

― Atrona Grizel

I feel like I’m going mad in proportion to the amount of time I spend in the physical world. Everything starts to feel colorless and bland. I feel an utter need to peel away from all this into a different reality, and honestly, this is the only way I can live. That is, setting aside all my “responsibilities” and discovering pictures that open onto other worlds, reading stories, and through them almost forgetting this world altogether. This gives me such pleasure that there are times I feel as if I might lose my mind, because it offers me something this world never can: alternative reality. Here there is only one time, one place, one life, but in literature millions are possible. The tyranny of singular reality effectively ends in imagination, because possibility takes the place of actuality, and so, possibility becomes the new and only actuality. And if a person has a tendency toward fantasy, then they can become so absorbed in these worlds that the outside world fades entirely into the background. After reading a gripping story, especially if I’ve read it in seclusion, meaning I’m not forced to immediately mix with people and forget it once I finish as a kind of “social reset,” its effect lasts for days. Inside my room, in an almost magical way, I continue to live mentally within the story I’ve read. If my entire day passes in seclusion, this becomes even more pleasurable, because I can spend the whole day daydreaming, and even when night comes and I fall asleep, I can continue seeing it in my dreams. In this way I can merge with that story, shifting my sense of self from the dull human world into a majestic, aesthetic one. It seems to me that if I were living under complete conditions of seclusion, meaning I didn’t see anyone at all for 24 hours a day, I would reach the point of having hallucinations. And this would not so much mean “losing touch with reality” as it would mean the inner world attaining total dominance, in other words, “being excessively attached to reality.”

― Atrona Grizel

There was a long intermediate phase in my evolution. In its early years, I still wanted connection, still felt envy at times, and still felt the ache of exclusion. Loneliness hurt deeply, and I could not sleep at night due to rage and frustration. But it did not lead to self-destruction or impulsivity, because I was already doubting that what I see simply does not register in the outer world by structure. And so I let those desires burn slowly on their own, overexposing myself to constant misattunement to such an extent that alienation became the new habitat. This meant I passed the stage of waiting for anyone to come. Because if I hadn’t, I could have acted upon the pain I felt during my early experiences of utter isolation. And so I didn’t collapse, but human connection became a childhood memory I barely remember. Now people see my current self: cold, contained, harsh, and judgmental. Because I had to be. And it is, again, others’ disgrace that someone like me had to become this way.

― Atrona Grizel

There is always this feeling inside me: that I produced all this philosophy and art simply because I was unloved and misunderstood, that so much developed to such an extreme merely because these two basic needs of mine were never met. My mind found its home in abstraction, and if I had been loved and understood, I could not have carried such a vast mind, because I would not have needed to constantly construct different realities and take refuge in them, and therefore I would not have used my mind to such an excessive extent.

― Atrona Grizel

The seller and the customer relate to each other only through money and because of money, and they never develop any deep human interest in each other’s lives. This is one of the effects of what Marxists call “commodity fetishism”: social relations between people are mediated and obscured by commodities, producing a materialist automatism in which individuals interact as functions of exchange rather than as human beings. Under such conditions, how could one not feel a deep spiritual shame in simply shopping at any marketplace?

― Atrona Grizel

When I find myself overly sad, I cannot help but feel arrogant about it. That is why I immediately think of those who carry the worst illnesses, those with the most painful disabilities, those living under the harshest conditions. For example, people born with severe congenital impairments, those living with heart disease, or those exploited in torture chambers. Because of this, my sadness cannot remain permanent, and if it does manage to remain, that makes me happy, because it feels like an achievement to me. And naturally, I end up taking pleasure in my sadness.

― Atrona Grizel

A person should know how not to feel ashamed of their own suffering, even while knowing that there are others who suffer more. Pain does not require authority.

― Atrona Grizel

A social circle does not “open” a person up; it loosens them. One becomes a slippery type who throws themselves into absurd adventures merely for entertainment. Because people do not know how to think individually, being part of a group causes their identity to fuse with that group, and consequently they become capable of doing anything for it. This is also what traps friends within one another, because they are mutually dependent. Under this influence, they reach such extremes that they sink into animality and still perceive it as a joke, braying with laughter in front of everyone. Late at night, when the surroundings are silent and I am exploring the darker layers of the internet, I repeatedly encounter the ugliest faces of these friend groups and stare at what I find on the screen each time with grim fascination. Among them are those who physically torture a person to death, laughing together and mocking them for entertainment. There are also those who rape babies, record it on camera, and smile at the lens with “happy poses” while doing so, because they are incapable of recognizing anyone outside their group as human, as someone who has a soul as well. This frightens me, because even those who have “innocent” friendships are, at their core, under the influence of the same mechanism: shared reality. Only the decoration differs. In most friendships this results in stupidity and superficiality, while in others it can escalate into acts of inhumanity. Criminal gangs or cartel groups are clear examples of this. If someone dares to be my friend, they must be prepared to revise the definition of “friendship” from its very roots, because the disturbing truth is this: these gangs and cartels share the same structure with ordinary friendships. A person who starts smoking for their friends might also eventually end up torturing people for their friends, because both arise from the same group-oriented mindset. This situation shows, in a sense, that a person who starts smoking due to peer pressure is the same as a person who, again due to peer pressure, becomes involved in dirty acts such as murder and trafficking.

― Atrona Grizel

A person is openly a slave of the social structure, yet seeing and accepting this openly is, of course, difficult. Consequently, many people align their minds with the mentality of society and thus suspend them, stopping their thinking, because they believe that by doing so they will prevent pain. For example, a person may view acquiring a job not as a burden but as “standing on their own feet” and count it as an “achievement.” Or a person may view compulsory military service not as inhumane but as a “discipline lesson that teaches the necessity of obedience” and count it as a “benefit.” The main point I want to draw attention to is that regardless of what one thinks about them, both a job and military service are generally compulsory. That is to say, even if they held opposing views about them, they would still be forced to do them anyway. They would still acquire a job, and they would still go to the army even though they do not like it. This means that the person who does not think does not even possess a life, because they sell themselves to society by believing that this is what living is. The thinking person, on the other hand, must be like a double-lived animal: outwardly so-called “compliant,” while inside, an agent who continues their true life.

― Atrona Grizel

I wanted to escape… I wanted it very much… to escape and never return. To leave everything as it is, to abandon and forget everything without touching a single thing, as if I were a passenger who had already been waiting to depart. At night I always imagine it: while the city sleeps and everything is quiet, wings suddenly grow from my back like a fairy’s, and I glide out through the window and fly into the sky, leaving all of this behind and never dealing with humanity again. Even the most innocent-looking social things awaken deep pain in me, because I do not share a common reality with society, and consequently I experience all of this merely because, despite everything, I am forced to live within society, since I do not have wings and never will. How did I come to feel things to this point? I don’t know. There was no single “main” event, only an infinite number of small and indirect assaults. Sometimes it all feels like a dream, or rather most of the time. And not in a metaphorical sense, it truly feels like a dream. And I want to forget even this by growing wings and flying away. But that will not happen. And no one should expect me to love a body so nailed to the ground that it cannot lift me into the sky. Besides… if I did fly into the sky, this time I would complain about feeling trapped in the atmosphere, unable to escape into space. And if I could reach space, then the prison would become existence itself… which it already is. It always is.

― Atrona Grizel

What disgusts me about so-called “voluntary” pedophilia is not that it is “ethically wrong,” but simply this: a child may want to use a gun out of curiosity…

― Atrona Grizel