It was a Wednesday in November 2015. Outside it had been raining for hours, the streets were sparkling wet, and in my one-room apartment in a suburb of Cologne it smelled of damp laundry and cheap coffee. I sat on the couch in sweatpants, the third day in a row the same sweater, staring at my phone. My girlfriend had left me two months earlier („You’re too depressed, I can’t do this anymore“), the company had just announced the third wave of terminations and I knew I would be next. 1,200 euros in the account. Rent, electricity, credit card. Everything was shaking.
Every Wednesday and Saturday I bought a EuroJackpot snote out of habit. Always the same numbers. My parents‘ birthdays, the house number from my childhood, and two numbers that I had come up with at some point because they looked „beautiful“. I typed it in online, paid with the credit card and immediately forgot about it. As always.
On Thursday morning at 6:17 I woke up because my phone was vibrating. A push message from the lottery app that I had actually muted:
„You won. Please check your license.”
I first thought of a mistake. Or one of those stupid 5 euro winnings. I opened the app, typed in the numbers... and there it was.
6 correct + 2 euro numbers. Jackpot. 35,127,843.20 euros.
I stared at the screen. Then I closed the app. Restarted. Entered again. Same. I opened the official page of the lottery, checked the draw results, read the numbers aloud as if I were making them more real. My hands were shaking so hard that I almost dropped the phone.
I got up, walked around the apartment in circles, held on to the kitchen table and started laughing. Loud. Hysterical. Then I sat down on the floor and cried. Right, with sobs and tears running into my mouth. Twenty minutes. Maybe longer.
After that it became quiet.
I didn’t tell anyone. Not my mother. Not my best friend. Not even my brother. I printed the bill, put it in a plastic cover and put it under the mattress. Then I made myself a coffee and stared out the window all day.
The next few days were surreal. I went shopping as usual. Standing in line at Aldi behind an old woman who counted 3.47 euros. Saw the news about the refugee crisis and the demonstrations. Heard the neighbor next door screaming again with his girlfriend. And I knew all along: I could end it all. Forever.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I started writing lists. What I would buy. What I wouldn’t buy. Who I should call. How I invest the money so that it is not gone within five years. I spent hours reading forums, reports of other winners who crashed afterwards. The stories about people who suddenly had “friends” they never knew before. About families who have torn themselves apart. About those who just disappeared.
On the tenth day, I submitted the bill.
The lady at the acceptance point looked at me for a long time when she checked the numbers. Then she got up, locked the door and said, “Sit down. This will be a moment.”
Then came the press. I refused. Complete. No interview, no photo, no name. Only the mandatory information. The money came to a separate account. I took a lawyer, a tax consultant, and got myself a new number.
And then? Then it got really weird.
The first few months I spent almost nothing. I returned to the same apartment, continued to cook the same pasta and drank the same cheap coffee. Sometimes I woke up at night and checked if the money was still there. As if it could dissolve into thin air.
At some point, I told my mother everything. She cried and said, „Thank God.“ Then she asked me if I could pay her debt. I did it. Without thinking. The next day my brother called. And the friend from the past. And the ex.
Suddenly everyone knew that „something“ must have happened. The rumors got louder. The calls more often. The expectations bigger. And I sat there with 35 million in the account and felt poorer than ever before.
It started creeping. First came the „just like that“ news. „Hey, long time no hear, how are you?“ Then the specific requests. The brother needed 20,000 for a „safe“ investment. An old school friend wanted 5,000 to save his pub. The ex suddenly wrote again that she had „made a mistake“ and if we could not meet. Even the neighbor next door, who I barely knew, approached me in the stairwell and said he had heard that I had „been lucky“.
I helped most of them. Too much. Way too much. Within a year, almost two million were gone - given away, loaned, „invested“ in things that never came back. Every time I thought: If I don’t do that, I’m the ass. If I do, maybe they’ll leave me alone.
They wouldn’t leave me alone.
The family broke up. My brother and I fought so much that we didn’t see each other for months. My mother eventually sided with him. „You have so much, why don’t you share more?“ Like the money doesn’t belong to me. As if I was obliged to take everyone with me.
The real friends? They stayed. Two, three people. Those who never asked for money. I started traveling with them secretly. Little things. A weekend in the mountains. A rental car that I paid in cash. Nothing Noticeable. But every time I came back, there was another message in the mailbox. Or a letter. Or someone was standing at the door.
After two years I terminated the apartment. Without warning. I moved to another city, got a new name for everyday life, only communicated through lawyers. The big house I bought at some point is empty. I live in a normal three-room apartment, drive a normal car, wear normal clothes. Most people who know me now know nothing.
Sometimes, at night, I lie awake and do the met. How much is left there. How long will it be enough if I continue to be so careful. And then I think back to the moment when the app lit up. To the laughter. To the crying on the kitchen floor.
The 35 million took away everything I had before – the illusion that money solves problems. The naive hope that happiness is just happiness. And the people I thought they liked me for my own sake.
Today is 2017. I am 34. I have more money than I could spend in ten lives. And yet I sometimes sit alone at the window in the evening, staring into the rain and wondering if I wouldn’t have burned the bill better.
Because the jackpot didn’t save me. He only showed who I really was – and who all the others.