Nothing is heavier to carry than the expectations that other people put upon your shoulders. Not only but especially the ones you love.
Maybe this was one of the reasons why Aaron did not love many people. Even more than that perhaps, he didn't see sense in loving at all.
Why would anyone want to love someone when people, himself included, are painfully ignorant? They poison the planet, ruin the environment, and tend to make themselves feel more important than they are.
Who would feel the urge to love them then, in full awareness of their nature?
To him it would have been the most reasonable thing to refrain from love in general. With one big plus: Not ever loving would certainly reduce the expectations that you feel on your own shoulders.
Despite the consistency with which Aaron usually went after things that made sense to him, it got hard for him to be consistent when it came to this. Because regardless of his justified complaints to do with human nature and the disapproval that he therefore felt for every person, he had to admit that, no matter how much he despised himself for it, in the end he too was still a man who would struggle hard if he refused to love.
Oh, fuck off! What a disappointment!
Aaron did not curse often, but swallowing the bitter pill that this admission was to him, he felt like dedicating a curse to love itself. Although he never really liked to compromise, he felt forced to go a middle way. Knowing that he would at some stage have to love, he tried to keep the circle small and his loved ones limited.
For half his life his parents were the only ones, and if apart from them there had been any others, he might have failed to move ahead under the weight that he then would have felt upon himself. Because the expectations put on him by only his mother and father were heavy enough already and almost impossible to carry.
Usually it feels like this for children without siblings. For their parents they are the only chance, so they feel constantly pressured into delivering and never really good enough for what they do or who they are. Aaron, however, wasn't born an only child. When he was little, he had a brother, Sasacha. According to his mother and father, though, an only child was what he was always meant to become, and therefore - there was no way around it, so they would explain - life just had to go the way it went and lead to what they only called "the incident".
Without further explanations at the dinner table it would be understood what they meant by it. Hearing it, everyone who knew them would recall it, but barely ever would anyone talk about it. For a good reason, because since "the incident" Aaron´s brother Sascha was dead.
"Nowadays we are ok with the fact that life had to kill him, you know?" His mother would sometimes state, and whenever she would, his father would add, "Yes, kiddo, we truly are, because we know if life had not killed off your brother, we would have never met the man that you have become."
Then, with a smile, his mother would take over again.
"You would not have been Aaron," she'd say, "the Aaron we know and love if we hadn't had to give your brother Sascha up."
They didn't really give him up, Sascha, his brother. It was more like two small children, who are constantly crying and screaming, could be a lot. As overtired as they were, who could really blame them that on a trip to the grocery shop they had been distracted in the parking lot and missed the car that would run over Sascha. Groceries all over the ground in between a lot of blood. Then a lot of moaning, many screams and sirens going, but when the ambulance arrived at the scene of the accident Sascha was already dead, and all at once it was only Aaron who Rita and Carl, his parents, had left.
You would guess a traumatic event like this stays with you, no matter how young you were when you experienced it. However, the incident did not stay with Aaron.
"It must have caused something in you, don't you think? Even if you cannot remember it..."
So people would assume when Aaron would tell them about it, but he would only shrug.
"Well, I don´t know, I wasn't really a person then. I was not even three myself, and the rails for my development couldn't have been set quite yet."
"Then you believe that the incident could have set them to where they led you today?"
"Well, no," Aaron would shake his head. "The incident didn't have an impact on the person I became."
For someone with a brilliant mind he was being ignorant if he genuinely believed it. To tell the truth he himself was not quite sure whether or not this was actually his opinion. But he didn't really want to think about it, so he just stopped wondering, and kept on saying that something which he couldn't consciously recall couldn't have shaped who he had become.
A few years prior to his death his parents died in a car accident. Even though they had supported him for all his life, Aaron didn't cry about it. Not only did he find their all too ordinary death perfectly appropriate for the all too ordinary lives they´d led. Apart from that, there was no denying it, he felt relief, because for as long as they had been amongst the living they had never fully let him forget that the incident had taken place.
They would keep on repeating that they could live with it, knowing that for Aaron´s development it had been needed. No, Aaron refused to believe them, but he never spoke up to them either. Whenever they would tell him, he would only nod, because anything else would be cruel, he thought, knowing what they had already lost.
"They have to tell themselves this story, otherwise they will not survive," he´d explain their crude statements to his wife whenever she would hear them. "It makes the things that they had to go through back then easier on them, because if they explain it like this then it seems to make sense. It seems like it had to happen, like it took place for a reason."
Right then Aaron would smile a bitter smile.
"The truth is, it did not. It didn't have to happen, but what they cannot face is that the only reason for it taking place was their insufficiency in parenting."
A blank-eyed pause, before he'd give a sigh and add: "I suppose, they should have done it just like us and never even had a child. Because in looking after one they more than definitely failed."
Perhaps this was the very reason why Aaron had never been interested in having children. Inherited guilt, therapists would call it, passed on to Aaron just like his mother´s green eyes or the crooked nose of his father. Looking at everything that he clearly inherited from them, their guilt was what Aaron took most pride in. Because no one, so he thought, should just go on to repeat the mistakes that their parents have made. Otherwise the human race would be doomed to fail.
Regardless of the neutral tone that Aaron´s voice would usually take on whenever he would say the things he'd say about his parents to his wife, something in her face would change. Instead of looking at him admiringly, she would start meeting his eyes with pity.
Just stop! Oh, how he hated for anyone to look at him this way!
She wouldn't notice that her eyes were upsetting him, and she would stay blind to the reasons why. They were upsetting him, because with their pity they would make him feel like he was letting her down. Like his shoulders were not strong enough to carry her expectations any further. He would never say it, though, so usually she'd only sigh at him - pitifully again - before she would go on.
"I think you have to tell your parents how you really feel about everything. How will you ever fully get over the incident if you don't say what you truly think? You cannot keep on agreeing with the way in which they choose to disguise their own failure to your detriment."
She´d wait for a reply, and when he wouldn't give her one, she would eventually shake her head and moan.
"Does all of this not put you under enormous pressure?"
Then suddenly his face would turn tense, and his lips would start trembling.
Why would she have to ask him this? He would have thoughts like this, but instead of expressing them, he would lock them in, so she would end up pushing him further by the words she´d keep on uttering.
God, when would she ever stop talking?
`"I just mean, being told by both your parents that your brother had to die just to give you room for development? That's cruel. It is like they blame you for his death, when they say only because he died you turned into yourself."
In all their years of marriage on the many occasions that this conversation took place Aaron would never interrupt her. Not even in moments like this, when his rage would have him shivering.
Stop now, stop, stop, stop, he'd think, whenever she would grab the word again, and she´d keep on going on, oblivious to the mess that she´d cause inside his head.
"Even apart from blaming you, by saying only because of the incident you could grow into who you became, they diminish everything that you have achieved. They deny the effort that you had to put in yourself in order to get where you are and nearly make it sound like without your brother's death you would be nothing at all."
A pause which would raise his hope that it would now be over with now, but for her it never was.
"It really hurts me to see that you always just agree with what they are saying," she´d keep on adding things which would all end up weighing on his shoulders. "Why would you not stand up for yourself?" She´d force him to his knees, and just as he'd give his best so he would not break down - not let her down - she'd say something that would break his back. "If it won't be you who is going to disagree with them, then can you at least support me when I do?"
Aaron rarely ever raised his voice. He might only ever have done it in this conversation on many occasions that it would take place.
"You will not, I´m telling you! They are good people! You will not say anything to them, if you want me to stay with you, do you understand?"
He'd shout it out, but with no emotion, it would sound colder than the arctic ocean. Afterwards Mara would be silent for some time, as she would realize that you cannot stand up for anyone who refuses to be seen for what they think and truly feel.
"You know, that you cannot tell them how you feel about what happened is probably the reason why you are struggling to deal with your feelings in general."
Then she would wait a bit as if she were almost scared to suggest what she would say next.
"I think you should go into therapy, Aaron, I really do. Because what's the point in life when you cannot experience what it FEELS like to be alive? I'm just saying, if living is meant to have a meaning, then what would it be if not feeling the feelings?"
"Oh, will you stop?"
Aaron would take his eyes off her, as if he were afraid to face her, and he would get up.
"It's not like I'm a sociopath, I know what feelings are."
"Well, you know what, Aaron?" All of a sudden her voice would grow firm. "I wish you were! I wish you were a sociopath, because then at least your state wouldn't be caused by yourself. But, sadly, I know that you are not, with you it is worse."
She´d cross her arms to protect her heart and would sound devastated when she would go on.
"You aren't a sociopath, but you are consciously choosing to behave like one and block out your feelings, because you are scared of them. You are scared that when you open the door to let anything that you are feeling out in order to actually feel it, then all of your unfelt and suppressed emotions - all the things that you are too much of a coward to face - might escape the vault as well and destroy you, before you can lock the door again."
Silence. Aaron´s back on her and his eyes blankly staring at the door, his best chance to escape. Her expectations, her demands, and most importantly himself.
Fight or flight. His heart would jump five beats and in the meantime he would decide how to proceed. Then he would walk out of the door without looking back at her, who would follow him outside, into the cold, into the night, hoping that he might change his mind. After 15 years of marriage, however, she should have known him better. On nights like this he never did.
He wasn't really a fan of overused sayings that have lost nearly all their meaning, but after fights like this he would usually rediscover the significance of `out of sight, out of mind`. He'd book a hotel room for a few nights, where he wouldn't have to see her, and locked inside it, he would be trying to forget how right the things she had said to him had been. A hotel room, where no one would know him, and even less would anyone in there ever have told him how he should behave or what he had to face. A hotel room, where he´d be able to relax his shoulders, because no one there would put an expectation on his back.
In his hotel room, for one or sometimes two full days, he would only sit in bed and try to figure out what he would do with Mara, and because he´d be so desperate to believe that her words in fact had not been right at all, his mind would help him prove it.
She just couldn't have been right, he'd tell himself, and that she never was. That she lacked credibility, because she was quite definitely not an expert in the field of relevance or any other. Why then should she ever be taken seriously by a knowledgeable man like him?
Have you ever noticed, his brilliant mind would ask, that the people who tell you what to do are usually the ones whose life nobody wants? Mara has never strived on her own. What kind of life would she have got, if it hadn't been for you? Everything she has ever had, you have given her that.
Actually, Aaron didn't take much pride in remembering it, but all those years ago when he and Mara had first met, she had been working the streets as a hooker. She had been nothing, before she'd met him. Didn´t that prove the point that he was making?
His scientist self should have understood that, no, it did not, because he was manipulating the evidence to get the result that he wanted by consciously eliminating information that could have proven his basic assumption wrong. However, Prof. Dr. Curbler, the scientist in him, wasn't in the hotel room with him on days like this. In the room there was only Aaron, the person that he was when he wasn't working.
It was like he was made up of two different people: his scientist self, and the Aaron who Mara was with. The two of them were incompatible opposites that no one in their right mind would ever even have tried to unite.
As a man of science, Prof. Dr. Curbler - brilliant, special, perfect - was detail-oriented and considered every fact and nuance to understand an entity to full extent. Maybe it would have been too tiring for Aaron to keep on doing the same outside of his profession, so he reserved the talent that was his critical thinking exclusively for the work he was doing. In his private life Aaron, the social creature, let himself be just as blind to detail as to different shades of things. Which was why when it came to people, it was always only black or white for him.
If you compared who he was at work to who he was at home, Aaron´s person was lacking coherence as a whole. He himself couldn't see it and would never have believed it. Does anyone have proof of that, would have been his first question. Can more than two different sources testify to it? Preferably experts with a decade of experience?
The answer would have been, no, because no one knew them both. What Aaron did best was to keep the two of them separate, that was his private and professional space.
Unfortunately, when doing so, he never realized how hard the intersection of his life was on his wife.
"I feel like I only ever get an atom of you," she had once tried to point it out, but holding on to silence, he had only shrugged, so the demands that he had thought to hear in these few words would be shaken off his shoulders.
"Will you not say something, no?"
In her voice, a hint of desperation that he would misread as just another accusation. Of course she was desperate! After 15 years of marriage she had still not met the entire Aaron. After what seemed like forever she did not know who he was when wasn't at home. He had never invited her to where he was employed, and in the evenings when he was off, he would conveniently circumnavigate her one too many questions about his projects and their progress.
"Are you saving the world quite yet?" She would usually ask at the very start of the conversation, to which he´d every single time respond, "Of course, I am. Oh, rabbit, if you only knew!"
"Tell me so!" She´d take her chance. "You know I would keep it to myself."
Another demand. Not again! Why would she always put so much pressure.on him?
Despite his boiling blood he would only smile at her, and to buy himself time, he'd put a piece of meat in his mouth and would start chewing. Not particularly on what he'd have between his teeth, but on her demanding investment in his person and profession. He´d chew and chew, so long and hard that the meat would start falling apart, and because even then he would still not stop, it would eventually disintegrate. Without anything left in his mouth he'd hear his teeth clashing against each other, and afraid that she could hear it too, he would finally stop to chew.
Has it been long enough? That would be his next thought.
Long enough so she would not recall what she had asked?
Forcing himself to face her, he would see in her brown eyes - full of excited expectation - that it would never be. They would still be staring even, if it were after all the chewing in the world. Nothing would buy him enough time for her to forget what she had asked of him.
Why would she always do this? Why would she always ask for things that he just couldn't give?
He would think exactly this about all of what he thought were her demands. Even about the smallest things, like when she would insinuate that he should help her with the bins. About things like this he might have been wrong to deem himself insufficient to give her what she had asked. However, regarding his job, he was not.
He couldn't have told her anything about it, and for once that had not only to do with him being selfish. Admittedly to some degree he was protecting himself by refusing to tell her, but just as much was he protecting her, because when he was honest with himself, he loved her in the end.
He might have done her wrong whenever he would book a hotel room just to escape her pressuring him into facing the incident. She might have said it in his best interest. Repeatedly, over and over again, meaning nothing but well for him. In his hotel room, however, Aaron would just brush her off as a selfish cunt, who had no idea what she was saying and only wanted to hear herself talk, when really she had nothing to say, when really she would always be just another hooker, standing somewhere in the streets, hoping for a well-heeled gentleman to book her.
Wasn't that what she had been doing when Aaron had first met her? Wasn't it the only thing that she had ever cared about?
She would never have married him, if he hadn't been rich by then. So he would tell himself in his hotel room, hoping that by doing so he would reach the result that he was going for: that, despite her outstanding blowjobs he should have left her long ago.
It must have been 10, 20, maybe 30 times that Aaron was right there: on a bed, in a shady hotel, looking for reasons to leave her, after she had made him feel like his shoulders wouldn't be strong enough to keep on holding her heavier growing expectations and demands. Why then, after all those times, was he still a married man?
It mustn't all have been that bad with her, at least not from the start. Usually he would discover this at some stage on day two, and as the tension would leave his body then, he would slide onto the pillows and commit to laying down. Sleep-deprived and in a more relaxed position, he would struggle to keep his mind from going back in time, where it would track down the reasons why he would always stick around. One of them and perhaps the most important one: Until their encounter Aaron had never had a relationship. Not in school, not in college, and neither briefly thereafter. However, like every other man, Aaron had had needs in sexual ways, and with a college degree in his pocket he had grown sick of suppressing them. After a good thousand lonely nights a decision had arised. There would be no harm in paying for his needs to be met.
He did not have money yet, so he had to go with whatever he could get. One night he went where he knew hookers could be found as soon as the sun went down. From the opposite side of the street and hidden in a group of trees, he observed them for a while, with his heart beating faster and faster. Until he felt comfortable enough to walk over.
With his hood pulled deep enough into his face so that he could hide from them, he followed the line in which he saw their shoes aligned. Even though he had given himself enough time to approach them, he still lacked the courage to look into their faces.
How out of place he felt!
It was embarrassing that he had to ask them for their charge, and he was talking so low that most of them didn't even understand what he wanted. The further he came in the line, the lower his voice became. However, just giving up and leaving was no option, because once committed to a thing, Aaron would feel the need to finish it.
High heels next to biker boots next to another pair of heels, but the shoes that he stood in front of, when his decision was made, were ordinary sneakers.
He gathered his courage and slowly took his eyes off the ground. Bit by bit he slid them up. From the sneakers to the fishnet tights, and a short skirt, black and white. A bit further up they reached a cropped top that looked ripped, and there it was, her heart-shaped face. The prettiest that Aaron had ever seen.
Pitchblack hair, slightly curled, and it was long enough to fall over her shoulders, like a veil. Dark almond-eyes as if she was a princess from the Middle East, and lips, so full that every man in the world would have craved to kiss them. It wasn´t even Mara´s looks that made him pick her, though. He had a more practical reason: his finances.
Out of all of them, she was the cheapest. No, that is actually not the way he liked to put it. He'd rather say she was the most affordable option. So affordable, in fact, that after this event he could meet her twice a week. Until winter came.
"Just wondering…," she asked one day at the end of autumn, her shivering hands couldn't close her bra fast enough to put on something warmer. "Do you actually not have anywhere to go? I mean, just look at where we are!"
She pointed at the wet leaves all around them. At the naked branches of the trees, under which he had just come inside her. At the meadows that were wearing a white wedding dress, which had left a good few blades of grass frozen to her perfect ass.
She wiped them off, slipped into her pants and jumped up while putting her coat on.
"Look, usually I would say, whatever you are into, but I cannot do it outside with you in the winter. I can literally not afford to get sick and be off work."
He was still naked, still comfortable, still sitting on the ground beneath her, when he met her eyes and forced an embarrassed smile.
"I know, I know…"
Sighing he got up just so for his next words he wouldn't feel like she was looking down on him.
"Well, I´m sorry, but what I cannot afford at the moment is a hotel. I promise you, thoúgh, someday I will make huge money and get us a room, and that room will be so luxurious that you will never forget it."
She laughed. For a moment he wasn't sure if it was at him, or because she was excited about the idea.
"Oh, ya?"
In her voice he heard that she considered him just another one of the many men who had made her a promise that they would forget the next day.
"Well, you have to do fairly well to find us a room like that," she scoffed. "I mean, some of my clients took me to pretty fancy hotels. But, sure, feel free to try. Can't wait to see it."
She pressed a kiss on his lips, turned around and was about to leave, when her curiosity got the better of her.
"Just wondering: What do you even do? For a living, I mean."
Should he even answer? She was hardly interested to hear it.
Or was she, and if so, then why would she be? Did she after all those weeks want to get to know him a bit, who came out to meet her eight times every month and fed her every penny that he had left? He wasn't sure, but he wanted to believe it.
"I am…."
He swallowed the words down and studied her for a moment to figure out if she would even know what it meant. She was staring at him in expectation of a revelation, and when he was taking too long for her taste, she crossed her arms and decided to go for it herself.
"Well, what are you, Aaron Curbler? Apart from broke, I mean, that is what I already know." She smiled to soften the blow, and added: "Oh, wait: You aren't a superhero who saves the world on a day to day basis, are you?"
Clearly she was joking, and despite his lack of social skills even Aaron knew that, but thinking about it, yes, she wasn't too far off.
"Honestly, I could be," he chose a bold move for once in his life, and when he saw how intrigued she suddenly seemed, it gave him the confidence to go on.
"Well, I am a geoengineer, I literally have ideas that could save the world. But you probably have never heard of geoengineering before and hardly know what it is that we are doing, so I guess you will now think that this broke guy with no money for a hotel room is only trying to impress you by making himself sound more important than he is. But honestly…"
He shrugged, and as he opened his mouth again to move on, Mara turned fully back towards him and came a step closer, shaking her head.
"No, not at all," she interrupted him, before he could add anything. "I do know what geoengineers do."
She raised her eyebrows.
"I… actually have this client who is working at some place that employs them."
"A place that employs them?" Aaron chuckled, because his lack of social skills and the lack of employment options that had left him broke led him to take her statement as a joke.
"Well, you should get me in contact with him, maybe I will make enough to get a fancy hotel room then."
As you grow older, you find out that most things in life are a circle that closes. At this very moment Aaron didn´t know that he was just about to enter one. The biggest one that there would ever be perhaps, because it was the circle that would give him his life, and at the same time lead him to his death.
It all started with her. Everything about him, with Mara. Only at the time Aaron didn't know it and just took the chances he was being presented with.
If he had never known her, would he still be here, breathing? Maybe so, but who would know for definite?
Putting it like that makes it sound too easy, and a person with a mind as extraordinary as his who lived and died as unusually as Aaron did, would not be satisfied with it, if it weren't some bit complicated.
However, you could maybe say that if it hadn't been for Mara, Aaron wouldn't have reached any of the things that he eventually achieved.