text: This is a short story written written rather quickly based upon a challenge friend gave me, I'd be interested to see what you make of it. It's not particularly good, but oh well. Regret? Maybe. The consequences were expected but were not planned for, nor were they properly thought through. After all when actions are spontaneous the long-term effects are often overlooked in favour of the short term gain. What were the short term gains? Experience, mostly. Not as in experience in performing such acts but emotional experience, the ability to extend the extent to which one can truly be empathetic towards another person. You see many people say they have felt all alone in the world, that they have felt isolated from the rest of humanity, but in truth their claims are lies. For many of them the feeling of loneliness was an exaggeration of their feelings. There would most likely be someone there for them be them parents, partners friends or mere acquaintances. In order to feel truly lonely all human relations, all ties to the world must be removed. In order to remove friends I simply stopped seeing them. I skipped school, didn’t attend their parties until they all forgot about me. Children are like that. To remove my parents something more drastic had to be done. My parents couldn’t be made to forget my existence and I could not run away since I would not be able to survive. In order to achieve a higher degree of understanding I had to remove my parents without changed my own situation. Of course, you know how I did this so there’s no point retelling my tale is there? But afterwards I truly felt lonely. I had no one to help me, no one to rely on or look up to. There was just me and the absence of everyone else. I was like that until you found me, I can’t quite say how long that is, but now I can say that I have felt true loneliness and can practice a higher degree of legitimate empathy with others. Of course, this is all just a theory. In practice, who knows, perhaps it backfired. Regardless I cannot say I regret what I did, but nor can I say that I remember it fondly. A sad memory, perhaps? A story to tell to others? Only time will tell.