For as long as I can remember I have always been living the lives of others. I’ve lived tens, hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of lives, and still I have yet to truly understand my circumstances. Despite all the time that has passed, countless of questions continue to fill my thoughtand the mystery of my identity is what plagues me the most. Before all of these, what kind of person was I? Did I live my life following the straight and narrow, or did I thrive on the despair and misery of others? Have I done something to deserve this fate of mine, or was this all simply just a random happenstance? Did I have people that I cherished and cared for? Was there someone out there who knew who I was? Someone who might be searching for me, wondering where I had gone? I truly do not know, but I must have had a life before this. Surely my existence did not begin on that day I first awoke in a strangers body, right? Was I really nothing before all of this?

I honestly do not know which is worse, to live this life of neverending lives knowing that everything that I am were all stripped away, never to be regained or remembered, or to live these lives knowing that they are the only lives I have and will ever know, that I had never existed until I takeover the existence of others. Which is worse than the other? Does it even matter? After all, whether I had lived a life before or not, the fact remains that, for the foreseeable future, I will continue to live lives that are not my own. That I will live out the rest of my days in days that are not mine, that my life is a story written with the stories of others, that my very existence is a tapestry weaved with threads ripped from tapestries not of my own.

This is all getting rather dreary really, but it’s honestly not all bad. To experience the lives of others is quite the experience. You see, when I live their lives, I gain an understanding of their lives as well. I would know them more intimately and with greater insight than even their closest friends and lovers ever could. I would acquire their memories, their entire lives up to the moment I take over would unravel and reveal itself to me. I would gain an understanding of their dreams and understandings. Their deepest secrets, darkest fears, and most shameful thoughts, none of them would be hidden from my eyes. Every pain, sorrow, joy, excitement, shame, pride, all of their emotions would be felt by me in full force. I do not just takeover their body, in the brief period of time when I became them, I become them in every sense of the word. I would completely adapt to their lives, acquire the skills they have, retain the knowledged they’ve learned, and master the crafts that they’ve mastered. All of it came as naturally to me as it may have for them. Of course these all the skills and craftsmanship left me when I leave the body, but while I live their lives those were all at my disposal.

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I remember one of my days as a merchant. My body at the time was lackluster and even slightly unappealing. It was that of a short and pudgy man, not quite fat really though the belly was quite bulging and flabby, this man definitely loved him some food. His black hair was few and far between and what does remain on his head were stringy and lifeless, looking more like black threads than hair. He dressed in a fashion befitting a merchant of his caliber, certainly better than most people could even afford though not particularly eye catching. While his fellows may often look down on him for wearing such drab and ugly clothes, especially compared to their more extravagant and expensive looking ones, this was a conscious choice on his part for he knows that such eye catching clothing would no dobut catch the wrong eyes. Like most merchant, this man, whose name is Gian Bertold, is fueled by greed and the need to make a profit. His trade revolves around leathers and cloths and as such, when I inhabited his body, I too gained the knowledge about them. I learned how leathers and cloths were made, which cities would be best to sell my wares at, which trade routes to take and which to avoid, and other such knowledge a merchant might know. I knew all of these things, and I excelled at them since my host was quite a successful merchant himself.

The next day however, when I woke up in a hammock tied on both ends on two sturdy trees, the skills that I had possessed were now gone. The knowledge remained, the knowledge always remains, but I now find it hard to apply that knowledge with my current host who didn’t even know how to read and write. What used to be within my grasp and was crystal clear was now more akin to wading through a swamp, murky and difficult.

That is all for now, for I feel myself awakening soon. I shall return, as I always do, in this place between lives.