The Next Day

I meditated to the rhythm of the snow crunching beneath my feet, the steady repetition gradually drawing me into a deeper, almost trance-like state.

One December evening, somewhere along a deserted suburban street.

There was nothing to worry about, because there was nothing to see.

Only snowflakes dancing in the glow of the streetlights against a canvas painted black.

I was home.

As far away as I could possibly be from the quiet, tingling anxiety that seemed to arise most strongly in daylight.

The light sharpened everything to such an extent that every frame my eyes processed reached me through a distorted filter.

It felt as though I were experiencing the desperation of a self-aware NPC trapped inside a video game.

Yes.

I think that's the closest I can come to describing the indescribable feeling that clinical language simply labels as depersonalization.

But here, in the darkness, I knew nothing of definitions that might have given me even the slightest reason to worry.

There was only a protective blackness draped over me like a veil.

Beyond it, I knew nothing else.

As if I hadn't even been born yet.

Then, as if the film had suddenly cut, something changed. The quiet, minimalist imagery gave way to a strange sense of insecurity, blurred together with sweat and the stale taste in my mouth.

The sensations rising through my body with the rapidly increasing heat gradually worked their way so deeply into my dream that I was eventually forced to leave it behind.

In the end, it was my heartbeat that woke me.

Before I woke up, everything somehow felt more real than it did afterwards.

Even the birdsong wasn't comforting.

Quite the opposite.

It scared the hell out of me, just like everything else in that moment.

I knew I was awake.

I just couldn't feel it.

Then, through the numbness, the first faint sensations of my body began to emerge.

A bitter taste in my mouth.

A sticky tongue.

A headache.

Ringing ears.

Diarrhea.

The pieces were starting to fall into place.

I was lying somewhere between drunkenness and a hangover.

After all, plenty of people make the mistake of not drinking while they're on medication...

But where?

Where the hell had I done something so stupid again?

Then, like a sudden flash of clarity, the answer hit me.

A quiet corner of the beach in Zebegény.

Of course.

The school placement.

Or whatever it was...

Let's just call it an art camp.

And then, all at once, it came back.

Presence

It must have been around two in the morning when, after staring at the blurred stars for far too long, I suddenly set off on impulse.

I didn't really know where I was going.

Only that I had to keep walking.

Yes...

Back then, there were certain things I had a tendency to romanticize simply because I didn't understand them.

And that particular calling was one of them.

I don't really know...

When I was drunk, that strange attraction to the darkness seemed to grow stronger, becoming almost tangible, taking on the presence of something deeply feminine.

It wasn't the first time I had felt it.

Sometimes it appeared in my dreams, where I could feel it literally pulling me toward the unknown.

And as terrified as I was, I enjoyed it just as much.

I never dared to surrender to it completely, because at the very last moment the fear of death would always jolt me awake.

Afterwards, there were times when I would lie there, unable to move for several minutes, still sensing its presence in the background.

It was a very strange feeling.

It resembled sexual passion, yet somehow never crossed that line. Instead, it became a tingling, otherworldly excitement that spread through my body.

Only a few fragmented memories came back to me.

Something heavy as hell, where I would occasionally lie down to catch my breath before continuing my aimless, yet increasingly profound wandering.

Eventually, I found myself on the beach below the Szőnyi art camp.

By the time I finished my last cigarette, my eyes had adjusted enough to the darkness to fix on a single point, helping to steady the relentless dizziness that threatened to make me throw up.

I had no idea it was all about to continue exactly where it had left off.

Confrontation

As I slowly came back to my senses, I became increasingly aware of my situation.

I'm screwed, I thought.

From previous experience, I knew that the intensity of the anxiety depended entirely on how much I had drunk the night before. It could range anywhere from an uneasy sense of anxiety to a full-blown fight-or-flight response. On a scale of one to ten, I was probably hovering somewhere around a seven or eight.

At moments like these, the guilt I had carried since childhood would inevitably resurface.

It felt as though I were throwing away the gift of becoming something more, only to repeat the past and take my place among the men in my family whose lives had been consumed by alcohol.

Almost like a vision.

But then how...

How could that feeling be overpowered by another one that felt such an irresistible urge to repeat the whole cycle?

I didn't have time to think it through.

The moment I noticed the first early-morning walkers in the distance, the panic button was pressed.

For a split second, I found myself debating whether to swim or run.

In the end, I ran.

Breathe. Keep your eyes on the ground.

That was the mantra I repeated to myself back then.

As I watched my unsteady feet carrying me forward, I tried to ignore the puzzled looks around me—and the fifteen-kilogram mattress I was balancing above my head.

My life is a tragicomedy, I thought.

About halfway back, on the steep road leading to the camp, I unexpectedly found myself face to face with a few of my teachers.

The sight of them instantly stirred the memory of the very first disciplinary warning I had ever received at school.

I managed a quiet greeting.

For a brief moment, I looked up from the reassuring texture of the grey asphalt beneath my feet.

But instead of the disapproving looks I had expected, I was met with nothing more than a casual grin and a dismissive wave.

What the hell was that? I thought.

For a moment, it felt as though I had shed the anxiety I had been carrying around for so long—anxiety I had somehow grown attached to.

In its place came the faintest hint of a realization.

After all, it was highly unlikely that, among so many young painters and graphic designers finding their own voices, I was the first anomaly my teachers had ever encountered.

If anything, some of our teachers were even greater anomalies than we were.

You could sense it in their unusual perspectives, woven naturally into the lessons, and in a way of being that only revealed itself if you paid close enough attention.

Or perhaps...

If you truly allowed yourself to feel it.

I still remember Szasza, who introduced us to the world of contemporary illustration.

For our very first assignment, he told us to watch the music video for Until It Sleeps.

Looking back, it's hardly surprising that the sight of one of their students—dirty, hungover, and barely holding himself together—didn't shake them all that much.

By then, they already knew me to some extent.

Through my work, I had been quietly showing them the inner process I was going through.

Some of them recognized it almost instinctively and gently guided me, allowing something in me to unfold.

That realization came like a lightning strike.

Suddenly, I felt a quiet sense of relief.

I was exactly where I needed to be.

Perhaps more than anywhere else I had ever been.

A brief laugh escaped after a long sigh.

That brief sense of relief only distracted me for a few moments from the frustration of being trapped inside my own body.

It was still only around eight in the morning, and I knew the rest I had earned was still a long way off.

After a cold shower and roughly a litre and a half of water, I fell asleep once again on the same mattress I had spent the previous night on.

This time, though, it had a bed frame beneath it.

With another abrupt cut, the nightmares gave way to something a little more peaceful.

The circumstances were on my side.

The camp was empty, and it felt as though a gentle cold front had settled beneath the grey sky.

I can't remember exactly, but if I had to guess, I headed straight into the woods after a quick lunch, with my sketchbook and a few markers in my bag.

Back then, I was the very definition of antisocial.

Strangely enough, I couldn't have cared less.

It felt as though I was running from a version of myself that was already beginning to fade, yet still managed to take hold of me more than once throughout that summer.

That constant back-and-forth between the old and the new was probably at its most intense during this period.

Looking back now, what once seemed like harmless self-destruction—or simply part of the creative lifestyle—was, in reality, the growing presence of alcoholism.

And the opposing force arrived at exactly the right time, stirring everything I might otherwise have quietly sunk into.