You don't like to muse over yourself, not seriously.

You like - love, actually - to think of how others see you. You never stop creating that image of yours that, of course, is entirely based on who you really are. What all people around you see is not an illusion, only the very essence of you - nicely coloured with their expectations and needs, their attitudes and habits. Teammates and coaches. Fans and admirers. Teachers and journalists. People who know you only from newspapers and TV. All other people. You display your extraordinariness with your whole demeanour, with every word, gesture and action, and no-one can remain indifferent to you. They have to be delighted, for you're simply exceptional.

You're intelligent. To such an extent that you sometimes feel you're surrounded by idiots. You gain distinctions on your school certificates and are a favourite of teachers, who, undoubtedly, hold you up as a model for your juniors. And you've never studied for a test. Your brain has the wonderful ability to remember everything you've heard, so you simply absorb the knowledge without a real effort. It's pretty convenient, since you have no time to spend it over the books. You wouldn't find anything interesting in them anyway, although you're able to casually recite fragments of Shakespeare you did in school to your present girlfriend, as well as come up with a physical equation to substantiate and depict the concept of play in the next game to the team. Your head never stops working, and you're certain that even in sleep, unconsciously, you develop strategies for the nearest match. You treat every situation you encounter as a challenge. You adjust to the conditions, simultaneously choosing from hundreds of plans the one that will doubtlessly lead to the victory.

You're perceptive. Analysis is your other name, and you're able to figure out the other person during just five minutes of talking or merely observing. You can see through people, their many levels and layers, their personalities, their ways of acting, their patterns of reacting. They have no secrets to you; you read their minds. You see the details other could never imagine, and put them together, creating the image that would surprise the person concerned. And sometimes frighten, too, if they only assume you can use that knowledge to your own ends. They know in the team they can rely on you, but at the same time they are more or less constantly on their guard and - which is quite funny, actually - keep their distance... You have even upset your own mom once with yet one another - accurate - comment of her behaviour, making her say with anger that you should study psychology or something and use your abilities in a beneficial way to society.

You're charming. No-one can resist you. You instinctively know how to approach a person. You can smile, joke and give compliments; also, you can remain silent if that's the best choice. Sometimes you can even clown around, for you realise you won't get far by being serious all the time. You're complaisant and treat your seniors with respect. Occasionally, you help the old ladies with their shopping bags and always give up your seat on a bus. Once, you helped the kids to find a lost puppy. You can tell when being polite will gain you more profit and when soft tap will work better than showing your teeth. You prefer to hide your frustration behind a smile, and manage to convey your criticism in light words. Fans are crazy about you, and you never neglect them, too. Girls love you. They line up to you, so even if one dumps you (and you say that you've no idea what you did wrong), another will immediately show.

You're talented. Someone like you is born once in a decade. They say you can bring out 100 percent of any player - and you add in your thoughts at least ten to that. When on the court, you're a king... and all other figures at the same time. You control everything. You think for the whole team - both this one and that one on the other side of the net - and you're always half a step before your opponent. Serve, receive, attack - and, above all, set. You're always aware where you should be, how much force you should use, whom you should toss to. You see the court in a full 360-degree perspective, and sometimes you're under the impression you're being each and every element of it. During play you nearly lost your borders and become one with the ball, and find yourself in a nearly funny state between instinct and analysis. Your team always wins, and volleyball is your second nature. No. The first. You were born to play volleyball, and nothing comes to you as easy as it.

Sometimes you think you might be called a superhuman, for you're better than others in every little thing. You like that image of yourself, promoted by your photographs in the newspapers, your profiles in magazines, and articles quoting you. You nurse it carefully, look at it with pleasure and believe in it. On a day-to-day basis, you believe in that ideal you are.

You prefer to simply receive that picture than seriously muse over yourself, in a deep manner, for when you do so, you realise that the truth is different. Even though you're intelligent, perceptive, charming and talented - you really are - in fact, you're not how you should be. You feel that something is off. You can't specify it, grasp it, maybe you don't even want to understand it, and that is why it escapes your extraordinary perception. What you know is that sometimes, when you're alone and careless enough to let your thought go that direction, you start to feel uncomfortable... and repeating all those beautiful phrases and epithets, instead of please you, makes you aware of emptiness inside you. Makes you realise that beautiful phrases and epithets are reflected in a distorting mirror and suddenly there is no longer anything beautiful about them. Intelligence turns into contempt, perspicacity turns into manipulation, charm turns into conceit, talent turns into jealousy.

You don't like to muse over yourself, for one day you might understand that not only you're not a superhuman, but also you lack something essential to call yourself a human. Maybe in one year, maybe the next week, maybe even today, soon. You sense it, you almost palpate that emptiness, sometimes you are able to see it, for a split second - that realisation there is nothing good, nothing pure, nothing worthful about you. And you feel terribly cold, and run away, and dive into the illusion that is being carefully woven from the truth, covering you like a soft blanket and warming you. You turn your eyes from the darkness and look into the light, believing you belong to it, and you think everything is all right now. You think that was just a dream, so horrible it was actually absurd, a nightmare you've already waked up from, and nothing to dwell on really.

But that impression stays inside your subconsciousness and cannot be forgotten. It comes to you by night; it catches you without warning by daylight, seizing your throat and suffocating you. You lose your footing and fall into that emptiness that tries to engulf you in the whole, until there is not a trace left of you. Until you vanish completely from this world, as if you'd never been here in the first place. It wishes for your annihilation, which fills you with sheer terror.

So you obsessively search - searched? - yourself for anything, a single, the smallest thing you haven't managed to ruin, deform, spoil, for something that is still pure and beautiful, and natural, and the way it has always been, and would always make you someone better than you really are. And then you stick to it and never want to let it go, never leave it, never reject it... for if you turned your back on it, then there would really be nothing left. You give it everything, scared to death that if you don't make an effort, it will turn its back on you. It demands the complete sacrifice, total commitment, perfect dedication - and you give yourself willingly, even eagerly, trying to satisfy it, trying to deafen that fear that is waiting behind the thin veil of oblivion and sticking its head every now and then to show itself to you.

You know you have to be the best. Better than the rest, better than anyone. You can't let anyone to surpass you and reach the top. Every skilled player is your rival. Enemy. Threat. Every gifted guy entering the court evokes that overwhelming terror you have to overcome in order to live. You can't give up. You have to be the best. So you train like hell for hours - on the court and in the gym, in front of the computer and in your own head. Your thoughts continuously evolve about the play. Power. Technique. Strategy. Team. Opponent. Serve. Receive. Toss. Over and over again. Visualisation. Simulation. Observation. Work, constant work in all possible ways, two, five, ten times harder than anyone else's. If you don't give it your best, nothing will change.

Only being the best can save you.

Only being the best can make you worth something.

Anything.

Maybe it's just a twisted way to convince yourself you're not an utter git. Maybe.

But sometimes, after a good game or even a training session, when you happen to smile to yourself - not with that perfected grimace of amusement and superiority that has nothing to do with sincerity, only with a real smile you carefully hide from the world - then, for a second, you feel some funny, tickling warmth inside, and that ice you have where others have heart, melts a bit.

You're not able to retain that feeling, yet you remember it unconsciously and keep pursuing it. You want to experience it again, for it seems to you that in those moments you can see yourself without deceiving... and still like yourself.

You're not brave enough to believe it yet, but you can't abandon the hope that one day you might be able to feel so all the time.