The Second World.

Years ago when it all began, when I was 16, I was lying in the grass and I heard a crying child. I looked for it. I couldn't find the child. When I went home I heard the child again. There was also some other person, who kept repeating my name. It was friendly, even kind. I thought this will be my secret. The child and the person who repeated my name belong to a world of freedom. A world where everything is possible. You may cry, you are a person. You can be invisible. You are an important person, you are not alone. The Sympathy World. I remember the day when I saw a river of blood in the middle of the city where I live. A World in the process of being created—with blood and a beast with a head consisting of tails and voices who told me things about death and that I am a misfit. All the things the voices told me, I believed. All the things I saw, I believed. I didn't make contact with the World of my friends nor with that of the passers-by. I must have been in the World of Death for quite a while. It felt so lonely. No one could help me. The man who I loved told me that I had to take the medicines. I was certain that the pills would not work, in fact I thought it was poison. Yet I took them for him, because I loved him. He would have left me had I refused to take my medicines. I made a choice: I chose him. The first days I did not notice any difference. But after a few weeks I stepped into another World. I became one with my friends again, not an outsider anymore. I became a part of a World where you can live and not die. The medicines made me think in a different way: I wasn't afraid of the usual things anymore. My thoughts were still negative but I wasn't afraid. To be or not to be? That's what it is. Now I am 41. The lonely World of Death hasn't vanished completely. It is still there, every day. But it doesn't possess me like it used to. I can live with two worlds. I even play with them. Sometimes when the voices say " You are a misfit, …