[m18pak]

Basically, I have felt petty and pathetic my entire life. It has always been this way.

I...I have never been allowed to make my own mistakes.

I have always felt weak and powerless.

I used to be incredibly bitter towards and resentful of everyone, because they made me so miserable, or so I thought.

Now I am trying to practice forgiveness.

So which of these things do you think it is?

My self? I don't know. I don't know myself. I never have. I don't know anyone else either.

I don't know what it is to be human, I guess. Or maybe I did but it was so painful that I couldn't bear it. Maybe it gave me only tears, and so I buried that part of me under the twin mountains of resignation and indifference.

I do know that I have never cared for anyone. Not my family, no my so-called friends, nobody. I would not shed a single tear if all the people I have shared this sordid existence of mine with died tomorrow. I would not mourn, for in truth they are already dead to me and I to them.

I am empathetic, but the pain I feel around those in grief is the pain of the abstract. I hurt from the sorrow itself. Not the sorrow of the person. I don't know people. I don't know how to treat people.

I guess that's because nobody has ever treated me like a person, like I was like them. From the very beginning, I was "different".

I have never related to anyone.

As I see it, or rather, as I feel it, you are right. I am blind.

I can't help it. I can't bear to look at the truth. I cannot see into the reflecting pool of my inner self.

I can't, because I am afraid.

The glow of vanity has been my only defense, and I am afraid to have even that stripped away from me.

In lieu of self-acceptance, I granted myself arrogance.

If I lose that, then I will have nothing.

But in reality, I really do have nothing, right? I do have nothing. Nothing about hollow dreams and fantasies, all as real and solid as the pitiful achievements of my miserable life, that I am oh so proud of.

I guess I can't let go. Life has been too cruel a mistress to me, teaching me with the lash and rod, and I escaped from it the only way I could, through my imagination.

I have a dream. It is all I have. And through the dream I may escape for a while.

I do hope to make the dream true.

But while the dream lives, I cannot; for I cannot face reality with it. I cannot take smoke in my hands and give it form. The image is so golden that I feel ashamed to be as I am, and because I feel ashamed as I am, I must cling to the image.

Long and heavy are my chains, for I have crafted each link with all my heart and soul, hammering them in with the utmost of care.

I mean, I find it interesting that some people on here have called me a good writer, because I have always found my writing to be contrived and hollow, Just like me, I guess. Nothing but florid rhetoric. Meaningless sounds of the tongue.

But anyway, what should I do? Do I just give up? Relinquish my ideals? Be happy in my absolute and complete wretchedness?

What?