You know I could have been someone else.

Maybe that was why you became interested in me, wanted to be with me. Maybe you saw what I am not, but could have been. Maybe that is what attracted you to me initially: not the promise of me, but the promise of what I might have been.

However, that someone else that you became interested in was not the same as me. Sooner or later you would have to realize that.

No, you’re right. I didn’t help. I knew from the start, that we were doomed. Already after our first date – do you remember how I accidentally hit you with the umbrella, and you said that was far from the worst that had happened to you on a date? – I knew that this would not last. You would never, ever, choose to be with me.

I fought against this certainty of course, but I did fancy myself alone in this endeavour. So naturally, I was surprised when you still wanted to be with me. I couldn’t believe my luck. I still can’t believe that, for just one short moment of time, I received the illusion of love.

The realistic part of me, the I who sees things as they are, remained sceptical of course. But other parts of me, other I:s, opened up to this, and grew. I became... more human perhaps? More something anyway.

You know, I really think you tried. Tried to see something in me that wasn’t really there. You failed to find it of course, but how can I blame you for that? There was nothing there to find in the first place. I don’t blame you for failing, I love you for trying.

The one who didn’t really try was I. I was so certain that you could never love me, that it colored every aspect of my being. At the same time, I held on to you, panicked at the prospect of the inevitable.

And you disentagled yourself from me so gently, that the illusion still held for a while. You had to lie or be evasive of course, but that was all part of it. All part of the lie that I had grown addicted to. Gradually, all my fears were confirmed, until i more or less forced you to declare that you couldn’t feel anything for me.

The possibly sad part is that when you finally did the right thing, I died. Not this I, but another I. Not the I that you thought I was of course; he was never here. Only I was. But another I did die then: the I that I could have been together with you. I was trying to form him, making him so much better than me, all thanks to you. I don’t know if he would have been good enough for you. Probably not. But he would have been better than me. And he’s gone now.

There were others of course: the I that wanted to use you. I tried to kill him but was never really able to: only you could do that. And of course the I that existed before. Was he better off than me, for never having known this illusion? No matter: he is dead now, and the dead do not care.

And beyond these three, many others pile up. The I that would have thrown everything away to be with you. The I who actually got to comfort you and try to make your life better. The I who succeeded at that, and the one who failed. The one who could actually express to you how wonderful you are. And so on and so on.

If by chance some of them are not dead yet, I will kill them. For you see, I cannot have them all within me, competing with me about what might have been. I am not big enough for that. I try to contain me, and the ones I love, and even with that, it gets crowded. I splinter, I flake away into pieces.

The only way for me to hold together is to institute this dictatorship. There can be no question about who calls the shots. So I kill them all. Only I will remain.

I am not better than them: I’m far inferior to most of them. But I at least have this central attribute: that I am the one that remains. Inferior to what I could have been, diminished compared to what I once was. But at least I remain.

And if that is success, I find I have no taste for it.