"What just happened…?
I guess I have to become myself again.
I have to understand why I jumped… why I lost control like that.
Thinking about everything now, none of it was real.....
So why did I panic? Why did I break?
How do you even ask yourself a question like that?
Before anything else… I have to find it first.
I have to go far back. Really far back.
Back to the moment my identity—my soul, my body, my very self—first emerged into a world ready to judge it.
Maybe I should start with the first real decision I ever made.
Or maybe with the first story my father ever told me.
I don't know where to begin yet.
But I know it has to be something important… something that became the backbone of who I am today.
And thinking about it now… I know exactly where to start.
There's a story my dad used to tell me when I was younger.
It was about a man who worked in a circus.
Inside the circus, he was everything people admired.
Cool. Charismatic. Untouchable.
He wore a mask that reflected the version of himself everyone loved.
And everybody—every single person—remembered his catchphrase.
The crowd would go insane the moment they heard his name. During his act, they screamed for him.
After it ended, they clapped so loudly it echoed even after he had already left the stage.
But that was only who he was inside the circus.
Outside of it… in ordinary life… he was a loser.
At least, that's what people saw him as.
A man with nothing to offer.
No dreams. No real friends. No one waiting for him anywhere.
The people he called friends only existed that way in his own mind.
In reality, no one checked on him.
No one invited him anywhere.
No one looked for him unless they needed the performer… never the person beneath the mask.
He was just extra baggage.
Or, like my father used to say…
'A man who breathes too much air.'"