Nobody knew about the meth

My aunt Majka took this photo on 22 February 2019, a few minutes before we left for the ball. She suggested I go with them. It felt like an invitation to have fun, and I accepted.

The costume theme wasn't my idea. I didn't lift a finger for the costume. Nothing. I just let myself be carried along — exactly the way I worked in everything else back then. No conscious activity, no effort. When other people take care of everything, thinking up a costume is fun.

The belly on that costume is padded. Only a little. The rest isn't.

In the end I went, with my cousin, and I had a decent time. I even danced. I had never danced before — and what I did that evening couldn't be called dancing either. But back then I thought it could.

I was going to work at the time. Repetitive work, but I went. I sat among colleagues, talked to them, went to lunch with them. I wasn't shut in at home. Shut in only in the evening — four walls, two cats, crisps and some series. Sometimes a bottle of wine with a woman I knew, who dragged me down more than I admitted to myself. It was thanks to her that I went back to meth.

Nobody knew about that. I want to write it precisely, because it matters: at that time not a single person knew about my past with meth. Not my family. Not aunt Majka, who invited me to that ball. Not the people I sat with in the office.

How much I weighed then, I don't know. Those were the two years when I stopped weighing myself completely. At home I have an exact record of every weigh-in since 15 July 2020 — date, number, everything. Before that date I have nothing. Not because I lost the notes. Because I never stepped on the scale. A man who doesn't weigh himself doesn't have to know where he is.

I have four or five photos from that period. This is one of them.

I don't remember what I thought looking at it back then. Maybe nothing. Today what strikes me is that this is how I imagined my future — sadness hidden behind a mask I don't even make myself.

Nobody in that photo can see what came before and what will come after. All you can see is a guy in red dungarees, smiling.