There was nowhere worth going in this city anymore. There were no real people. Everyone was fake, insecure, and materialistic. They were drowning in their own shallowness, something which doesn't seem possible but somehow they achieve such depths. These were the people who occupied every dive, every joint, every bunker, every bar, every social club, every evening class. It just seems like people want to live a fake life then justify it by controlling everything around them. I didn't understand why they wanted to have this pretend existence in the first place. Everything they strived to become has led to that and all they do is continue to live in this pretend roles. I just did not want to endorse it or be witness to it. They may want to waste their precious minds on it, but I didn't. It was bad enough just to know about it. I felt emotionally drained from having shed all my friends and my life and this time knowing it was for good. I had finally figured it out. They were all fake, and they had always been fake, and so had our friendship. What I knew for certain this time was that they were never going to be in my life again. I wish I could just get them out of my head. It's hard to accept that people who may have been a part of my life for years were no longer going to be. All those years were wasted and my life should be better, facing it without them, but I just felt low. I felt so down, and betrayed. I did not know how I had let it get this far. I had given them everything. I had wasted myself on their asses. Now I just felt angry and exhausted. I wanted to feel refreshed but I just didn't. I didn't want to make new friends either. What was the point? Seriously, who thought up this message and to drive it into us? I get further in my life without anyone else's input. I never felt like a loser about it, until I was told to. Who do people think they are anyway? They just think they are better than me, and feel validated by the friendship I allow them to make their fortune for free with such ease. I think I was trying to be personable but it was all to no avail. It always seemed to benefit them and never me. It would be fine if it was mutual but it wasn't. They were left with more and I was left with less, even nothing sometimes.

I was not worried about the past and what had been. It just felt strange that there was nothing to remind me of them, absent or not. I had disconnected myself when I should have disconnected them. This was the way it had to be. They were just a temptation, a distraction that I needed to remove, if I ever wanted to be happy again. All I needed was myself. I was an introvert. I liked people, but not enough to let them in so much they hurt me which they inevitably did in some way, whether this was financially, emotionally, physically, or spiritually. It was time for me to think more of myself. Now I had this time, it was a question of how I made good use of it. Obviously everything I did in my past had not worked. I wanted to be a yoga instructor and a massage therapist but no- one believed in me. Nobody ever thought I could just follow my dreams and have it pay off. No- one valued my dreams and no- one encouraged them. This made it difficult for me to do so. They had no problem telling me what I couldn't do but never told me what I could. After they spent all their energy telling me all the things I couldn't do, there didn't seem to be many options left of what I could do. I wish I just did what I wanted. I wish I could just do what I wanted, but I couldn't. I felt ill and run- down all the time. I was always biting my nails. I had no energy to enjoy the small things in life, even though that was all I seemed to be doing. I was too bored to find any motivation even though the possibilities were seemingly endless. All I wanted was for someone to believe in me, after having been let down by all I had believed in. All I really wanted to do was travel. I wanted to be able to do work that would allow me to travel, without having to ever have any fixed abode. I didn't want to settle in only to find I wanted to move again. All I wanted was to have no commitments, no contract tying me into anything. I wanted to be free, roaming around. This dream was not feasible and I am sure no- one who was close to me in my life would hesitate in telling me so. If I was able to free my mind to the point where I felt it actually belonged to me, I have no doubt I would be pursuing all my dreams. I have no doubt of this at all. If one day I was treated like a human, loved for all I was and all I am, all the mistakes I'd made, instead of having them held against me. If I was allowed to figure out my own hopes and fears instead of living by theirs I am sure I would be able to break free of my own chains too. If only this was true, if only I could dream.

It had taken a long time to get here, feeling like a whole song instead of just parts of it, feeling like the whole book, the whole picture, instead of parts of it. You would think I would be happy. You would think I would feel free. You would think I would be ecstatic, jumping for joy. You would think I would be living out my aspirations. Hmmm, aspirations. Apparently this is a negative word now. Apparently aspiring to be something stops you from actually being it. What bullshit. I think if I knew how to be exactly the person I wanted, I would be that person. Being fed all these lies, like women are afraid of success, men are afraid of strong women. Who the fuck cares? I'm not afraid of success, not at all. It's just the way I measure success is so intricate that to me it looks like a pretty impossible puzzle to complete. If success was measured by money, having a steady relationship and career and if that was the kind of success my heart really yearned for, I have no doubt I would have had it by now. I do not measure success like that and never have, no matter how much television screens, billboards, the model industry and society in general may have tried to drum into me from the age I was whenever I saw my first Disney film and hated it. In fact I don't think I have ever been taught anything but conventions and I was so bored of how unfulfilling they all seemed, yet we were supposed to give up our hopes and dreams for them. To me it seems that because other people would be happy to see us in those roles we should be happy too. It may be so much easier for those around us to define us by the standards of convention but why do we even care what they think? Why would we slave away to attain that for someone else, and not be happy ourselves at the end of it? Why do we value their opinions so much anyway, so much more than our own? It was crazy to me and maybe I was on another level. Maybe no- one else would be able to relate. Maybe I am all alone. Just another illusion they all feed us to keep us in our boxes. Another illusion they feed us to keep on paying into their status quo merchandise. Being surveyed on facebook, having our every moved watched to see what is selling and what's not. Being a part of the system thinking we are cool and subversive, yet we are on that shit, giving up our real lives, our real thoughts and desires for it. Feeling connected by it, but unaware of how disconnected we actually are, unaware of the actual real damage it is causing us. It's better to be part of something corrupt than not part of anything at all. I just couldn't take it anymore. We are fully grown, realised adults now. We can't pretend to be so naïve we don't know what's going on just because of our addiction, vanity and anxiety. It may be hard for people to face up to, but for me it's a lot easier than being on that shit. It just ruined me, and I don't want to be ruined anymore. I want to make time, not waste time. I want to be who I am even if that means nobody else understanding me, and hating me because of it. I don't want to be part of the masquerade, I don't want to be a good one in a bad bunch. I want to be an amazing one in an amazing bunch, no competition invoked, implied or involved. I don't want my pageantry to be judged on having 9 out of 10 for personality but 6 out of 10 for looks or vice versa, whatever is better for whatever is going on that day. Fuck that. I'm over it, and if I'm the only one who is, so be it. I'll stand alone. I always have. If I fit in, whether through actually fitting in or pretending and I was happy with it, I would not be here now with these thoughts, this 'revelation.' If nobody who spent three days out of the week with me for years could see who I really was through the blur of the fakeness they decided was more important then I don't want them to know me and I don't want to know them. I had always stood alone, but I was happier when I was doing that, than when I tried to be like everyone else, and I had spent more time trying to perfect the latter. I didn't understand why. I had always been so different, but maybe it was me more than anyone else who never accepted or embraced that. Maybe it was I who hadn't been trued to myself, always trying to fit in and never learning that I never would. I never fit in. Who wants to fit in? To have no trademark? Who wants to be only complete when they achieve the approval of others? Who wants to have their personality reflected back to them by others, often for the sake of others? Who doesn't want to be unique? Who doesn't want to fight to be free from that shit? Well, I did. I saw what was going on around me, and I wanted out. This time it really is goodbye from me, from my hands waving to my heart waving, it had to be goodbye, for the sake of my sanity, for the sake of my truth, for the sake of my peace.