Salvation (standard:other, 1226 words)
Author: Nick	Added: Dec 07 2002	Views/Reads: 3548/2026	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
It is about a young man and the 23rd of December.

I am awakened by music coming from my stereo. The Samples sing
Summertime but nothing could be farther from the truth. It is seven 
o`clock on the twenty third of December, holidays just begun and I am a 
little hungover from a party yesterday a friend of mine gave, to 
celebrate these holy days. I do not turn off the music and just lay 
still in my bed, listening. 

And all the truth is founded on lies. 

Enjoying that for once I do not have to get up and fight through an
endlessly seeming day full of insecurity and genuine sadness. It is 
Christmas time, I am alive, I have friends and I am wealthy enough to 
forget that there are people dying, starving, freezing to death in this 
very moment, even in this country, that the suicide rate over these 
days is the highest in the year and that our planet gets destroyed more 
with every minute. I am one of the privileged people, who can afford to 
live these days the way our religion or society thought they should be, 
by giving, helping, celebrating the birth of our saviour and the most 
important forgetting about my own problems. Because in the end all of 
our sins will be forgiven and we will be redeemed. 

"What a big lie", I think to myself as I slowly open my eyes, afraid
that some lost sunbeam may hit them and ravage my head. But nothing 
happens, no piercing pain explodes in my head and forces me to close my 
eyes again, they just feel a little dry and I only sense some pulsating 
vein on my forehead. In the obscure twilight of an early December 
morning, I walk past my room with nothing on except my boxers, to the 
light switch and turn it on. My room lights up but that is the only 
thing that happens. I am relieved. I would not have been looking 
forward to a day full of headaches and depressing dark rooms. I swallow 
some painkillers as a precaution, even though I know that I do not 
really need them. Then I walk to my stereo and turn it off. The last 
sung line stays in the air for an uncomfortable long time. 

And all the truth is founded on lies. 

It is always hardest to get in a solemn mood in the morning, when
everything is still dark and cold and the festive Christmas decorations 
have been turned off. It always reminds me of a song, which title and 
lyrics I forgot, but the memory of their sense seem so depressing and 
for the worst so appropriate. I leave my room, take a long shower, get 
dressed and then go to the kitchen. In every room I pass I turn on the 
light. Before I eat break-fast I go outside and want to turn on my 
Christmas decorations, just to learn that I forgot to turn them off 
last night. I go back inside. When I close the door I shiver a little. 
It is colder outside than I thought. I eat something. As I am finished 
I take a look at the kitchen clock. In big, blinking, green glowing 
letters it says 8:30 a.m.. The problem with getting up early in 
holidays is, that no one else does. So without something to do I decide 
to go to church. (It is not really a spontaneous decision. It is more 
something like tradition out of boredom. Christmas has been the only 
time in year my family went to church. But that every year.) It takes 
huge amounts of good will to call it church though. It is more a little 
chapel hidden between gigantic skyscrapers. It takes me half an hour to 
get there and some bigger more beautiful churches would have been 
nearer to my place, but tradition demands to go to this one. The mass 
is pretty boring and I think I even fall asleep once or twice. 

"Do you always sleep in churches?" 

I start up from sleep and look straight in two bright, brown eyes. I am
unable to answer the question the girl next to me asked. The moment 
gets unbearably long, seconds begin to stretch and seem like hours. I 
look around. The mass is over and except for an old women, who is 
sitting in the front row, praying and the girl next to me, everyone has 
already left. Smiling she asks again: 

"Do you often sleep in churches?" 

"Only on Christmas." 

I manage to answer, still half asleep. 

"Because this is the only time in year I go to church" 



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