The darkness of my world...

But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The keyboard in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of solitude creeping through me as I awake at five o'clock in the morning and the world was hushed. Perhaps existing just for me.

... until that moment he had not understood that this was a story about lonely people, about absence and loss, about embracing the void that is in your heart and learning to live with it. Even more so, finding ways to enjoy it. And that was why he had taken refuge in it until he became confused with his own life, like someone who has escaped into the pages of a novel because those whom he needs to love seem nothing more than ghosts inhabiting the mind of a stranger. Somehow, somewhere, for whatever reason, the dullness became stillness, and that then transformed into a stout sense of calm. Who could have ever thought.