The cruelest irony is that he did not start by hating himself. He started by hating the volume of the world. He wanted to turn down the noise. Drugs turned down the noise, then turned off the lights, then unplugged the house from the grid.
Finally, he demolished the basement where his shadow lived—the part of him that remembered who he was before . He needed that shadow gone. Because the shadow kept whispering, "Remember the maps?" The Boy Who Lost Himself To Drugs BETTER
What replaced the house was a terminal. An airport lounge of the damned. No past, no future, only the next five minutes. He became a ghost who still breathed. He walked past his own reflection in shop windows and saw a stranger wearing his face like a hostage. The cruelest irony is that he did not