text: or so this was my selfishness and ignorance that will lead to my untimely death. **The** hubris of men may come to a point of confusion, unable to distinguish reality from fantasy. This is my reality. I am not a god in the traditional sense, but a mortal man that assumed the role of a god. For a man to think that he is a god and that the follies of his kind no longer apply to himself are what caused me to be cast from the heavens. This is how my story begins. **No** common man has feasted in the presence of the gods, nor has any common man ever lain with a goddess. Such are the dreams of men. How I was able to meet the goddess of love and beauty, Aphrodite herself, is still a mystery to me. In the fleeting spring of years gone by, this goddess shone her light upon me, and after our first embrace we quickly became infatuated with each other. Her, the goddess of love, and I, a common, mortal man. For reasons I will never know, she would whisk me away to experience what I never could have imagined. Soon I would lose grasp of the reality of who I really was. **Days** turned into months, and those into years, as I would grow ever more proud and take more of my blessings for granted. Soon I would mistake myself for somebody other than a selfish, arrogant fool. I would come to expect the love of the goddess that took me in, rather than earn it with acts of equal merit and thoughtfulness. Instead, I would stand at the top of Olympus and stare through the clouds with a celestial clarity, pitying those at the base of the mountain, not realizing that I was one of them. I came to believe that I was on the same level as the gods, and that I deserved to be in the heavens. I forgot that I was only in the heavens because of the grace of my love, Aphrodite. The gods themselves could no longer tolerate this pride and arrogance, this self deceit, and had quickly cast me from the heavens... deservingly so. **As** I fell from the sky, I knew that I was as mortal as Icarus, and that my own ignorance was the cause of my plummet into the sea. Unlike Icarus who fell to his death, I had drifted away, only to be swept through the waves into the stormiest of seas, the darkest of days, and the loneliest of nights. When I finally arrived at the shore, I collected myself and made my way towards town, with a mind full of thoughts that ached with every step. As the days passed, and seemed to grow ever longer, my anger quickly turned into regret and self-pity. I began to walk through the streets, snickering at the commoners that I peered down upon, only in an attempt to disguise my own shame and emptiness. How could I have mistreated the most divine woman in all of creation? She was the embodiment of love itself, and I used to be able to call her mine. **I** never deserved to taste the ambrosia or feel the warm embrace of a goddess, yet a goddess never deserved a thankless mortal to receive without giving, to receive without singing her praises throughout the heavens, to receive without knowing the luck that had befallen him to merely be in her presence. Somebody as loving and selfless as Aphrodite needs an outstanding man... no! An outstanding GOD to care for her as she once cared for me. The euphoria she bestowed on me will never know an equal. She gave to me what many men will never know, what most could never dream. **I** had it all. I was truly a god, no matter how short my time may have seemed. I have enjoyed emotions and experiences that I never could have imagined without the love of a goddess. My own hubris and ignorance are what led me to where I am today, and I have no one to blame but myself. I cannot say that I am a mortal man and that I must be accepted for who I am. After experiencing the feasts of the gods and the love of a goddess, I shall forever search for something that will never satisfy what I had been accustomed to. Every morning that I wake to find that I am not next to my love, leaves me pondering what I am to do with this mortal existence. **If** my goddess, my one true love, cannot see the tears in my eyes, feel the sorrow on my breath, or know the remorse in my soul, she would surely never know the depth of my misery without her. If I am left to wander in search of earthly meals and an earthly woman, I will starve, beyond any doubt. I will starve, both physically and emotionally, before I found anything palatable enough to stomach my way through.