I always felt misunderstood, like I didn't belong in this World. If I hadn't acted and pretended in front of others, pretending to be the way they wanted to see me, I have a feeling that no one would even talk to me, let alone spend time with me or maybe their life. Since this morning, I have remembered the woman I claim to have truly loved. Commenting on my need to analyze everything down to the smallest detail, she once told me:

"You are one of the few people who butchers something good, but with the precision of a surgeon, I guess so that it bleeds less and heals more easily."

That reflects how the one I felt with all my heart saw me. I will not comment on whether she also thought of me with her heart.

The one to whom I tried to surrender recognized the butcher in me. So, what should I expect from someone for whom I am less critical?

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But that's also good concerning how I sometimes perceive myself. Some mornings, when I look in the mirror, it's good that I don't pass out from astonishment. I look so bad I'm scared of myself. It's as if I'm looking at a stranger in the mirror and not the image of the expected self. Old age is catching up with me much faster than I expected.

My nostrils widen from the conceited stench that comes through my thoughts from somewhere inside, from myself. My insides have been occupied by shadows rotting in eternal darkness without a hint of light.

I have intricate conversations with myself in such moments of state of mind. Occasionally, a character from my imagination joins them. It's a gray, rude, and mocking face that gets in my face and mocks me, persistently and brazenly complaining more than I can bear. It makes me nauseous, like a bloated stray dog attacked by thousands of worms that twist, crackle, sink, and bite rotten flesh, which stinks by the side of the road. Everyone knows that you remove the rot from the side of the road or you run away from it, but you can't run away from yourself.

After such conditions, life seems fragile to me, as if it was made of paper scraps that someone assembled into a whole with some lousy glue. Sometimes, these feelings intensify so much that I think I will fall into thousands of pieces, carried away by a gust of wind to the mother of the devil, from where no one will ever ask about me again. And as I fall apart from the unknown depths of my head, I hear hideous laughter mocking me for my life and failures. My life has consisted of low odds and significant defeats.

And what about your life?