Stephan Urbach

I have to make a confession. A very personal one. I wanted to die.

I planned everything. I planned how to do it. I organized the tools to do it. I wrote down how to gain access to my email account, my server, my IRC sessions and who was to be informed. I was in a deep depression. I saw no way out to stop this feeling other than to commit suicide.

The pressure was to much for me. I was working since January on different projects with Telecomix and others. We were helping egyptians to gain back their connection to the internet, helped in Syria, Lybia and many other countries to give the opressed a possibility to speak. We made it possible that their voices were being heard. Literally, I fought for that. I fought against my sleeping cycle, eating habits and my need for recreation. On some days it was normal to stay awake for 30 or more hours.

I saw and read things I would never have considered possible. In the last months we helped many people to get connected to the internet, to speak up and to show the world what was happening. Some people got lost. I never saw them again and I do not know if they just moved away from us or if they got arrested or killed. I do not fucking know and I will never know.

Every day in the media we see so many bad news from all over the world – news which are bad but which do not affect us directly. The news about these people (or lack thereof) who were talking to me affected me deeply. The pressure arose to help, to help these people who struggle hard for their right to speak freely. The more we helped the people the more the responsibility I felt grew to a new level.

I could not fucking sleep any more. I drank way to much. I smoked more than was good for me. I saw no more meaning in my life than helping other people. Over that, I forgot what I needed for myself. Sleep, recreation, movies, music. Hanging around with my friends and not thinking about people on the ground and what to do next.

One day I realised that I was lost. Lost in this life that was not mine. Lost in a life where I only served others, people considering me a hero. Noone saw that i was just a little boy who wanted to play around with techology and write papers about the future of communication.

Long story short: It all needed to end for me. I saw no other way than going. Leaving. Not beeing a hero any more. I planned to commit suicide a day after the CCC Camp. Everything was prepared. But there it happened. We closed down the activist cluster I was with. I met many great people for the first time in real-life and many of them have the same problem. My friends were there and showed me that life is worth living it.

With the reboot of the cluster I will reboot myself. I am starting to make plans for my life again. I am not lost anymore. I have my place in the hacking and activists scene and I have my friends all over the world. I am not alone and the facts I considered a burden are not a burden anymore but opened my eyes to what is important in life: To communicate what you feel. And if my communication of my feelings helps others to do the same, it was worth it.

So, shutting myself down to reboot. It is time. reboot -h now.

I have to make a confession. A very personal one. I wanted to die. I planned everything. I planned how to do it. I organized the tools to do it. I wrote down how to gain access to my email account, my server, my IRC sessions and who was to be informed. I was in ...