loneliness
When she left the pale, suffocated school building under the babbling waves in the trembling flow of the crowd, she saw the waiting vehicle from afar. She walked steadily and unyieldingly in mechanical foot change with a mask of blank expression towards the car. Opening the door and sliding into the seat, her mother glared at her with suspicion. After all, she knew that in the girl's massive rucksack, somewhere in the tangle of leaves, there was a little booklet written in blue ink and decorated with red paint in the addendum.

"And?" whispered the mother in a tinny voice. "Not good," the girl whispered, stretching out all the fingers on one hand without looking up into her mother's eyes seething with anger. "What will become of you?" the mother asked her emphatically. As if this were a moment that decided between life and death. The girl said nothing, her eyes filling with moisture. "I beg you! Please don't cry around now!” the mother yelled indignantly as she left the driveway with squeaking tires. "You can hardly show up for piano lessons so weepy, and it's your own fault after all! God knows how hard I try for you! Pay your grant, get you from here to there and you? You don't seem to do anything!” She cast cold looks of disregard at the little wretch crouched beside her, head bowed and eyes narrowed. "I don't think you know how good you have it! My parents wouldn't have financed it for me, Fraulein! I hope the next grade will be better, otherwise you can forget about your studies. And then you have to see what becomes of you...!"

The girl froze under the familiar speech. Wanted to get better, get much, much better so her mother could finally love her. So that her father would finally be proud of her. So that she could finally lead a happy life.

The gray and white of the street seemed ruthless to the girl. Wagoned from one place to another, head full of complex formulas, elegant words, rigid evaluations of performance, and with a lonely, self-freezing cold in its heart, it marveled at the constant torment and darkness of life.
Because where instead of love for knowledge, for life and for people one sows only achievement and instead of tenderness only compulsion, there can no longer be great spirits and geniuses, but only uniform emptiness and loneliness.