I talked to her yesterday, but it wasn't the same. I smiled, and I laughed, and through exuberant gestures continued carrying the façade of normality (whatever that was anyway), but I find myself slipping, falling, and losing the one constant that I thought I had. I thought that I had found a place, somewhere that I could really be myself and say whatever I damn wanted, but I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I am molded into the person that I am supposed to be not through my family or friends, but because of myself. I find that I have lost my own identity; it has meshed with the personalities of hundreds of others, as if I am an absorbent sponge that borrow bits and pieces from everyone else. She told me how she felt, and I feel now as if I feel the exact same way to everything else in life…

I mocked those with shallow minds, people who relied completely on another for an opinion, a spineless rebel that wanted something yet could not, would not say what they must. I laughed, arrogantly, as I watched those struggling with their own indecision, battling with their fears of themselves, and I ignored those who tried to leech on to people they believed stronger than themselves. And then there were those who I, curious and naïve, decided to delve into the mysteries of their mind, and I found a person who was alone and a complete idiot. Withdrawing from this world, from this addiction, I realized that I too had turned into one of the people I once scorned.

So pathetic.

I won't ever be rid of that impulse, of that signal my nerve cells release as soon as they hear only a whisper of that word. It haunts me today, and I know that it will continue following me, just a step behind, reminding me of the weak person that I still am. I look behind me, and I see only failures, lies, and regrets, and I lose whatever self-confidence I had.

But oh wait—that self-confidence was simply a façade—or was it? Did I actually believe in myself at one point? No, I couldn't have.

I was losing, losing the people and the things that I cared about the most, and was retreating more and more into the world of mindless metacognition, seeking refuge in statistics, in solid facts, depending on others to provide the analysis. They would laugh at me, tell me I was being sentimental or a liar, but it's true, all of it is completely true. I was losing her, slowly but surely, and I knew that one day, I would wake up and things would have changed, irrevocably and irreparably.

I lost all the privacy that I thought I had gained, my secrets now exposed for the rest of to see and mock and laugh at what I have become. I can not say what I feel anymore and sometimes I don't even know what, just a jumble of mixed emotions that I am now to afraid to reveal. I need a new beginning, a new start, and I am tired of being pushed to do things too quickly, and give up too much of myself, for a cause that I don't even know. Why should I still hold on to something that I have lost? I ask that of you and of myself, and I decide that the damage has been done and I am abandoned to this world of self-pity and self-hatred.

The answer to my first question?

No.

It will never be the same.