The Intro

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Feb 17, 2026

A whore will always remain a whore, a murderer will always remain a murderer, a thief will always remain a thief. A raped child will remain raped even when they grow up.

There are things we do, or things we experience, that stay with us forever. You can’t erase them from memory - neither ours nor other people’s.

We call it trauma.

There are very sophisticated ways of treating people for trauma - psychological, psychiatric, pharmaceutical, spiritual. Scientific, religious, and quackish.

Sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Sometimes a person starts a new life, sometimes they stay stuck in it, pretending to themselves and others that they’ve dealt with it.

And sometimes they just kill themselves. Death by hanging. Or else…

But I’ll tell you what’s the hardest thing about trauma… A trauma is not equal to a trauma.

Generally, trauma caused by death, violence, rape, illness, or some other “terrible” event is widely accepted and respected. Victims of war, assaults, or accidents can expect understanding and compassion. The lack of it is practically condemned.

But there’s a whole mass of “ordinary” and “minor” things that lead to trauma.

For example, when you were reciting a poem at a school performance and forgot the lines, and the whole school laughed at you and pointed fingers at you for a week.

And to this day, you can’t get over it. You are always insecure. You always feel judged.

Or when you gave the first flower of your life to the girl you were crazy about, and she looked at you first with surprise, then with disgust, turned around and ran away. And later her friends laughed their asses off at the loser…

And that’s why you’re still alone.

Or when you lost your office job as a manager and for a year you couldn’t find a new one. And in the end, just so you wouldn’t starve, you started working as a courier hauling packages, or stocking shelves in a local grocery store.

Now that you’ve improved your life, you keep it a deep secret and consider moving to another town just to avoid your former coworkers - or worse, your former clients.

In each of these cases, those events become a source of lifelong shame. Low self-esteem. Even self-hatred. Trauma.

But nobody cares about that kind of trauma. Nobody treats it seriously. Telling these stories in the context of trauma exposes you either to ridicule or outright offense.

Because how do you compare a youthful heartbreak to a gang rape? How do you compare people laughing at you for forgetting poem lines twenty years ago to the death of someone’s only child from leukemia? How do you compare a company going bankrupt to the tragic death of a wife or husband in a car crash?

How dare you. Who do you think you are. Get a grip.

As a result, you’re left alone with your “not serious” traumas. Either you drown them out with heavy work or frantic partying, or you wash them down with vodka or bury them under drugs. Or eventually you choose the final solution.

In every version you lose. And nobody can understand it.

Because let’s take that whole bankruptcy thing… You’re a business owner or entrepreneur. You’ve got some successes behind you, you build the business for four or five years - maybe even a decade. And suddenly it’s over. You lose everything. You’re left with debts.

Pfft, big deal… Normal business risk. Normal company life cycle. Companies rise - companies fall. This one of yours just fell. What’s there to talk about. You’ll open another one. You’ll pay off the debts. What trauma, man? Don’t be a crybaby! What are you even doing. Feeling sorry for yourself. Pull yourself together. And if you can’t, then you weren’t cut out to run a business in the first place.
Trauma, fuck… What do you know about trauma… When I was a kid my father beat me and my mother just watched. She always stood behind him. Nobody defended me. And what - and nothing, fuck it, I’m alive! And your little business didn’t work out… Boo hoo… Crybaby. Acting like some loser.
My trauma! That was a real trauma where I come from…

So yeah. You always go bankrupt alone. Nobody sympathizes with you — instead everyone’s pissed off at you. Everyone wants everything from you. Even though you’re drowning in debt, everyone wants money from you immediately. In the end it doesn’t matter how much you owe. When you lose everything and can’t even afford bread, even twenty thousand euros of debt becomes lifelong.

Your old world is burning.

You fire people you only recently hired. You sell off furniture and equipment for one cent on the euro. You stand in front of furious creditors and have to tell them “I don’t have it.”

You stand in front of an employee you’re firing who can’t pay rent and has to move out. Or who took a loan a month ago and now has no way to repay it.

What are you supposed to tell him? That you yourself can’t afford to live? You? The entrepreneur? The boss?

What kind of boss does that make you? What kind of entrepreneur?

Where’s my money? What am I supposed to tell my girlfriend, my wife, my child? I have to get that money. I have to have it, you understand? Where’s my money? Where’s my money?

Or:

Sir, I understand your temporary difficulties, but you really must pay us. For the next installment. For the rent. For the delivered goods. For the internet. For the phone. For the last service. For maintaining the bank account.
When will you pay? Can you manage by the end of the day? By the end of the month? No sir, this is not how we’re going to talk.
No! Don’t interrupt me! That’s not my problem.
When will you return our money? Where is our money? Please return our money!!!

A silent scream. Teeth clenched. Fists clenched. Eyes fixed on the closed window. And for the first time that thought - maybe I should open it…?

Fear. Shame. Hopelessness. Breakdown. Shame. Panic attack. Fear of answering the next call. Fear at the mere sound of the phone ringing. Fear of the postman bringing more payment demands. Shame in front of the postman. Desperation. Depression. Fear. Shame. No sleep. Vomiting. Trembling hands and legs caused by chronic stress. Constant headaches. Nail biting. Digging your nails into your face, your hands, the rest of your body. Punching walls. Kicking chairs.

What’s wrong with you? What are you doing?

That look from your partner - girlfriend, boyfriend, wife or husband - piercing straight through you. A child who can’t understand why they won’t get what they always got before. Arguments - one after another - that you cannot win.

Unimaginable guilt. Fear. Shame.

Shame.

You look at the window again.

There are only two things in life a person cannot endure more of: more pain and more shame.

Those are the only two things where death feels like the better option.

The catch is, you’re already not alive…

Because most people fight until the very end. They don’t give up, they don’t admit defeat. Only afterward comes the realization that in truth the bankruptcy happened half a year ago.

You died without even knowing it.