Disclaimer: No matter how many times I try to take over the world, I still can't manage to gain ownership of YGO. Guess I will just have to come up with a new plan… Until then, I don't own YGO.

You don't know me anymore.

I see you stare at me, having this weird delusion that if you stare long enough that I will melt and change back into the person I used to be. As you stare at me, you are wondering what happened to the kind, happy naïve person I used to be. Well let me tell you.

I used to be stupid enough to believe that I would always have someone that would look out for me and actually care. Where was my supposable friends when I was laying in the gutter, rain pouring down my body as I watched the deep red blood slowly snake it's way down my wrists? Where were my supposed friends when I was trapped in the shadow realm, my mind being devoured bit-by-bit, piece-by-piece? Where was everyone, when I lay in bed every night, crying myself to sleep from the pain tearing at my heart, only to be forced to relive my nightmares?

I was forced to wake up and realize the truth. This world is a cold, cruel and lonely place and you need to look out for yourself and yourself alone if you want to survive. Friends will not always be there, they come and go like the seasons of the year. There is no guardian angel or some divine being that actually cares about you. If you don't look out for yourself, you do not survive because nobody else looks out for you.

Grief is a powerful and crippling emotion. Grief renders you defenseless. It screams out to the world 'I am weak, come target me'. It blinds, it binds, and it leaves you disabled, incapable of doing anything. Grief attacks your heart, tearing and shattering it into thousands of pieces. It takes and takes until there is nothing left.

However hate, anger and rage are much more powerful then grief. Hate motivates you. It banishes the grief, the pain and the weakness. It picks you up from the gutter and hardens you, making you into a stronger and more powerful person. It comforts, it sooths and it motivates you to keep going. It gives you a reason to keep fighting, to keep living.

I chose power over pain, darkness over light. I've given my soul to the darkness, allowed it to change me into the person you see now. You still stare at me, expecting me to change back into the pathetic, weak, Mai I used to be. Hate to disappoint you honey, but it aint gonna happen.

This is no mask, no act to try to fool you. Hate has twisted and changed me, crafting me into the better person I am now. It has changed my eyes from the empty and blank ones I used to have to ones filled with fire and a reason to live. It has taught me the truth. I have learnt to look out for myself, and myself alone.

I am not going to go back to the person I used to be. That person is dead, never to return again. I refuse to go back, to be drowning again in pain. I will survive, and keep on surviving.

I have changed, and am not the person I used to be. You don't know me anymore. I am destroying everything that has to do with the person I once used to be, starting with you.

Authors Notes:- I wrote this one-shot fanfiction from Mai's point of view when I was in a rather weird mood. If you don't like it, then deal with it.

Before you say that Mai was not suicidal and didn't cut her wrists, I don't always take everything written in the YGO anime as the complete story. Quite often there is a little more to the story then what the characters say. When Mai was telling her little sob story, she was obviously depressed and having constant nightmares of what Marik did to her and the shadow realm and I built on it and made her past self a tad suicidal. After all, normal happy people don't sit in the rain crying. There would be no way that 4 kids would allow Mai to say she was suicidal because it would give kids bad morals or some crap like that).

And before you flame that Yugi and his friends would never leave Mai, this is from Mai's point of view, NOT Joeys.

Anyways, all reviews are welcome. All flames I will laugh at and start toasting marshmallows.