Had an interesting conversation with Alan last night. Although whatever I’ve said probably did not get through to him, the words struck a chord in me, one I have never really paid much attention to over the last 10 years.

Recently I have found myself a place, an escape from the reality I live in. In my reality (just as everyone else is), I live under the weight of my own mask. Perhaps it all started a long time ago, longer than I can even remember. But I do remember hating myself a lot in the past, and frantically trying to re-package myself into someone I am not, but longed to be.

More than a decade has passed since then, and I am now 99% what I have always wanted to be. It is then that I realize that everyone around me now knows me now for who I truly am, but for what I have become. Looking back, I have probably become that which I once truly wanted, but at the same time that which I truly detest.

In this escape I have found, while most may think of it as some sort of egoistic achievement with the opposite sex, I think otherwise. I may claim that not for one moment do I take singular interest in any of the 3, though the interest is almost obvious from them. What I am really drawn to is that fact that they do not know anything about me, just as I almost do not know anything about them.

In this tiny apartment where everything seems on the surface a game with many lies, perhaps it is here that, ironically, the truth reveals itself. Here, I am accepted not for what I am, but for who I am. Here, I don’t even have a surname, just me. I get to enjoy the pure bliss of ignorance, I forget my talents, my ventures, my status (if any), my reputation, my skills. I am nobody other than myself, and they accept me for that.

Of course, this will probably all come to an end soon. Perhaps it has already come to an end when I crossed the line with one of them. Whatever the case, deep down in that hidden part of me, I am truly thankful to life to have laid such an arrangement, in which for 4 days, I could be totally myself again.

For all this, I have re-written the lyrics of “You Raise Me Up” by Josh Groban:

The winds of dawn, shall dry thy eyes so teary
As rivers flows, our sorrows to the sea
And here I stand, upon a sole reflection
The memory that you once stood by me

(chorus)
For who shall say, that our love is forever
And who could see, the pain tomorrow brings
Through it all, a broken heart endeavours
To find the hands, to piece it back again

The starry night, caress a face so weary
As oceans roll, my soul waits endlessly
For do I see, your shadow in the corner
Or is that just, a hidden part of me

(repeat chorus)