This is where I stand.

I started reading again. Books that I've already read, but it makes me remember the days when I could just get lost in the story and forget about the present reality. It's as if I no longer need to worry, I'm no longer required to doubt. As long as the character within the pages prevails. Am I pathetic for wishing I wasn't me? Am I weak for wanting something different? I go through the words and the story speaks so vividly of love and compassion and destiny, yet the actuality of those things is dull, and in most cases, non-existent. So what have I to hope for? I don't live in the story. I live in reality. And the harshness of such a bleak and merciless plane of existence is disheartening to the point of utter agony. My sorrow rises with every minute that I am forced to live through it. It's become so great that I feel imprisoned within my own mind and the only place of solace is within the pages of that book. That Book. It draws me in so far that I am finally free. Forget everything else. Forget the sorrow and the agony and the pain while I read about the protagonist finding his one true love. While I envision him offering that person his deepest devotion, and her accepting without question. What a world that would be.

It's all a lie. Those stories and ballads about love and destiny. It's all bullshit. It's all fake. It's all a carefully plotted out, pretty sounding facade composed by the greatest story-tellers ever known to man. People who have the ability to make you believe in whatever they say, and then exaggerated ten-fold by the normal denizens of society. Fickle-minded people who believe every word that the stories portray. People like me, who find solace and salvation within the words. Within the pages. Within the books. Within the STORIES. That's why they are called stories. Because they aren't real. And everytime I come to this realization, I die. Because this is my never-ending strife. This is my agony. And it'll echo in a dull roar of suffering for eternity.