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1. Automatic
There wasn't much talking going on in the band anymore. The last words we said were part of a heavy discussion about who ever came up with the ludicrous idea to make music together. It wasn't exceptional that a tear stained face was walking numbly through our house, and no one paid attention to the sobbing sounds coming out of one of our bedrooms. Like we didn't want to be seen as a group anymore, but as four full-fledged persons, everyone for himself dieing of his unbearable life. That was the clearest similarity between us: we all were exhausted.
One gets used to fame, I can't deny that. There were so many moments I remembered clearly, like the first award we won, or the first moments we found ourselves between the people that were stars in our eyes. But the longer we were in the spotlights, the fewer new experiences we found. There were even things that I really used to love, but I had turned against now. Fans that had changed from the best supporters into monsters. Endless attention that led to the disappearance of the thing that others called 'private life'. Something like that did not exist in this world, because of a million dollar company called Tokio Hotel, we made ourselves public property. We were so young, and naive, above all.
That we knew everything now, did not mean we were satisfied with our lives. We had our doubts. Doubts that we had already felt halfway 2006, but that no one had risked to mention. About how long we could take this, no one could say a word. Maybe we would learn to deal with it very fast. Maybe we were like spineless puppets. I was under no illusions.
Where everything used to turn on making music, the only thing that counted now, were the sales count. From singles, albums, merchandising. We had won and lost fans. But fans were just like a black spot in our lives. To us they weren't any more real people as we were to them. Almost any of them said to care about us, but at the same time they were the girls who were standing in front of our house for hours, waiting to see a gleam of our cars. Their expediency was more important than their respect for me and the three other guys. That's how true their love was.
And that wasn't even the worst thing. The thing we used to set so many value on – keeping your own will – had failed completely. We just didn't have a choice, there wasn't any way out, no option to say no. I often felt manipulated, lied to, so I would feel like I enjoyed what I was doing. Deep inside, I was painfully aware of that.
I wasn't having a lot of profound conversations with my brother anymore. He knew how I felt, but I knew exactly how he felt about it, too. Tom was in the same heavy situation as I was and for the first time in our lives, we could impossibly help each other.

It wasn't hard to describe what our lives looked like right now. We lived in a huge house, surrounded by a high fence around the garden. That fence was there, so you couldn't look from the outside into our house – but an unpleasant circumstance was, that it worked the same way otherwise. There wasn't any room from which we had a view that reached further than the big, brown fence. I had been looking through a window desirously so often, looking at the pink flowers, the leafs that were moving in the wind. The little things, where no being was thinking about, could intrigue me so much. Sometimes I felt the almost irrepressible need to smell the flowers, to feel if the leafs were as soft as they looked, a longing to feel the heat of the sun, burning on my skin. I only knew the smell of the night. The darkness, the moisture. The white moonlight, gulping down all the colors. It was exactly how I saw my life. The night was depressing.

The only moments of freedom we knew, were the moments in our cars. Tom and I usually drove together, hidden behind the blinded windows. My license gave me a feeling of being able to escape from my life, to break away from reality. No matter how short these moments were – I needed them, like I needed oxygen. Because though I didn't have many control left, I was human after all. A person made of flesh and blood, a person with desires, with hope, happiness and grief. A person that knew about misery. But mainly, a human being looking for true love. Someone who wished he was loved, to feel affection. I was the only one who didn't seem to forget about that.

Sometimes I remembered the blurry picture of myself as a 13-year-old. A small, short haired boy with huge ambitions. I had decided to never lose myself in the fame. To scream, to use my voice when someone tried to tell me what I had to do. To make sure no one influenced my thoughts. No one would ever tell me what to think, I decided. Now I realized, that I had had no clue about this life. That I didn't know how hard it was to be a product. I had seen dollar signs appearing in the eyes of people around me, I was taken everywhere and nowhere, my passport counted more stamps than I cared for and making music, seemed to have become a insignificant thing.

I had tried to scream so many times. But my voice had become just as small as I felt. I wasn't heard anymore.