I'm playing at being a real person lately. It's funny how easily I can sometimes pretend like that. Pretend that I'm someone who can be loved. Someone who can succeed. Someone with a purpose. I imagine I have such good intentions, love to give, protection and advice to offer. It's all sh*t. Icing contrived over a steaming soup of rot underneath. That's all it is. Imaginary. I can only hurt, how can I stop pretending to help? How can I stop subjecting others to myself? How can I stop feeling? If I hadn't buried myself so deep in work this week I might end up at the wrong end of a bottle, I don't know, I don't know if it matters. Anything I do will only hurt. There's no other way for me, I've tried it all. There's nothing stable, nothing true in life. I'm a passing shadow to others. Perhaps they take what little they can, or perceive briefly a shape that amuses them, but then it just fades back to black, blending into the background, and I go back to rotting, alone, never attained, not worth the effort. What did I think? That the gods would allow this? That a smile could last? That happiness would this time not pass? Why did I drink? Was it to alleviate the rotting? Was it to accelerate it? Why am I still here? Thirty years and dead for a lifetime already. I have nothing to offer, only the wrong things. I'm the enticing berry found in the woods by starving souls, I look pretty and appetizing by I'm deceiving, poisonous underneath, I cause hemorrhaging, pain, I'm a charade, a fool, an unhappy ghost. I must stop subjecting the world to myself.