Soap

Traumtänzer

Traumtänzer (noun. german)

A person with their head in the clouds and dreams almost outrages but definitely hard to fulfill.
Dream Dancer.

Now I had a few different jobs in my 25 years of living.
I've started handing out newspapers in my neighborhood when I was only thirteen and after that I never stopped working.

When I was sixteen I started a part-time job as a cashier in a little drugstore to support my mother who had lost her own job and was just starting to found her company.
I soon dropped out of school after that. Times were hard back then and after a while i had to choose between quitting school and quitting my job. And money was more important than anything at that time.

I guess I could have done evening school to at least graduate but i knew that it would tear me apart if i did that.
I am someone that is overwhelmed very fast.
That is a bad trade of mine but I came to terms with that.
Now I know what my body and mind can take and what they cant and that is something I am proud of.

Around the same time all those things changed for me, I found out what I wanted to do with my life.

I've always loved to draw and just... do art in general.
That is why I started writing and drawing my own comic book.
In my head I had this dream about coming together with a huge publisher who was just amazed by my work and I would become famous and never have to worry about money again.
But that's all it was.
A dream.

Dont get me wrong, I got pretty close to fulfilling that exact dream only a few years ago.
When I started an apprenticeship at a publishing agency and uploaded some spreads of my comic online. A lot of people liked what I did but not enough to make "umbrella academy" famous.
And then, a few months ago, everything went to shit.
One of the CEO's of the company apparently committed tax fraud and the whole agency went bankrupt.

They had to let go of many workers and I was one of them.

And just like that the chances of fulfilling my dream went from 50% to 0% again and I was just where I had started.
My online page had stopped growing and even the few fans I had made with "umbrella academy" left after I wasnt able to upload daily.

I guess that's how I got to work for my mother.
Of course I could have just applied for another agency and start over.
But after watching everything I worked for go down the drain I just didn't want to.
I neither had the energy nor the self-esteem to go the same way again.

Why should I? It wouldn't work anyway.

That might sound very disappointing and like I had given up - and that might me true - but it helps me deal with my current situation.
It's easier excepting where I had ended up when I keep telling myself that this is my only choice.

If i kept dreaming about becoming a famous comic book author this life right now would feel like a cage.
It still does from time to time but I mostly manage to deal with it.

Though on days like this, where I have more work on my schedule than i could possibly manage, I cursed the damn CEO that didnt pay his taxes.
Because if it wasnt for him I would probably still be working at the agency and I wouldn't be on my way to clean ityer peoples flats and houses.

Although especially on this day I did the work that wasn't even mine.
Because today, on a Friday afternoon, I was on my way to Frank Ieros place because my mother couldn't.
Normally I would be off for the rest of the day after having one client in the morning (sweet Mrs. Hampshire - an old lady with a thick british accent that always offered me cookies and slipped me a few bucks on the side every now and then.)
But not today.
And the only thing keeping me going was the thought of the extra work only lasting a few weeks, maybe a month or two, until my mom could go back and do it herself again.

Also everything I knew about Frank Iero made him the perfect client for great tips.

I didn't know much about him.
My mother was very secretive about that guy, making me curious about him.
She only told me that this guy was stupidly rich.
Apparently he had started out as a small wedding photographer.
I dont know how but through some lucky coincidence he had made himself known in the celebrity world and was now one of the most famous photographers in america. He shot for many known magazines like Vogue and shit like that.
I have probably seen some of his works already but I wasn't aware of that.
But I swear that I heard his name being mentioned on TV and the radio more than once. And that practically made him a celebrity.

Needless to say I was excited to see how his apartment looked like.
A persons flat can give you a very good idea of their character and after all the fuss I made up about him in my head I really wanted to know what kind of person Frank Iero really was.

Of course I had a vague idea of him in my head.
In my mind he was a pretty chill older dude in his fifties that was probably also gay.
He would wear white and grey because its aesthetically pleasing and everything in his flat would also be white and grey and maybe also black. Oh and rose-gold too because it gives everything a royal touch.
He would have black and white photographs printed on huge canvases on his wall that's always looked like they had been freshly painted. And of course he took them all himself.

At least that is what I pictured Frank Iero to be.
Boy... was i wrong.

And so I walked through the busy streets, coming across many rushed faces and became one of them.