It’s dark outside. It’s cold, you’re cold, but you have the window open anyway because it makes the room feel bigger, makes you feel less trapped. You hear the sound of a car passing through every few minutes, but beyond that, silence. You put your book down, having finished a passage so raw with emotion that you almost cried, and you check your phone, four notifications, but no messages. You wonder what to do with yourself. Plenty you should be doing, plenty you could be doing, but nothing you really want to do. You turn the light off and lie on your bed, allowing the loneliness to envelop you, such is the depth of your sadness. Plenty of work done, plenty of milestones passed, but nothing has really changed. You wonder if it will always be like this, if the days will always end with you alone in your empty room, true happiness still just out of reach, just around the corner, just a few steps further, just as it always has been. You decide to grab your laptop and start writing, but words fail you now, the one thing you thought you were good at swallowed up by the nothingness, just as everything else has been. You stare at the lamp currently illuminating the room, the one you bought in Istanbul, a beautiful lamp, yet the urge to smash it is so strong you have to close your eyes and take some deep breaths. Another car passes and the rain starts to fall, gently tapping the window, reminding you that time marches on, the relentlessness of it all unnerving and unavoidable. You crave a cigarette, but the depth of the pit you find yourself in renders you unable to move, unable to focus, unable to care. You take one step forward, two steps back, you walk around in circles, you hide yourself from those you love, you question if you even exist. Who are you? You are no one, you are a creation, a product, a myth, a fairytale, you are whoever they need you to be, you are whoever you need to be, you are nothing, you are everything, you are empty. You wonder how many times you can write this piece before it gets too much. You wonder if they will ever find you.