To Keep Myself Well

I'm talking to you.

Even with everything I am, I cannot hold onto you. Though I try to hide my face and trap myself elsewhere, again and again I turn back to look...

You are that empty space within me—when I try to fill it with something else, I can no longer find the space itself. I never wanted to be alone, because this emptiness and solitude together bring me to death's threshold. Despite my utmost efforts to deceive myself, I fail again and again, and inevitably return to the same place. I know I will never have a place here, which is why I never wanted to sustain myself on false hopes—I only wanted to keep myself far, far away from you. But every time I've tried to cover this void, I've betrayed myself.

How many times I reason with myself—there is no such love in this world, nothing here lasts forever. Love changes... this is love's only constant. Yet somehow, beyond the reach of all logic, the scene keeps shifting. I can no longer convince myself that I am right. In the judgment of right and wrong, the wrong always appears to be right.

Knowing that a girl like me—undereducated, unattractive, ugly, dark—could never deserve your love, I still make the same mistake over and over. There is no greater mistake in this world than annoying someone with one-sided love like this. I understand everything; understanding it all, I value my feelings for you exactly as much as I value your lack of feelings for me.

Shall I tell you a small truth?

I actually go to you for my own happiness, I go to you to forget my sorrows for a little while, I go to you to forget—even to erase—those memories from my life that hurt me a little more each day. This is the only reason I love you. Going to you, spending some time with you, I can keep myself well, I can buy my own joy—that's why I love you. Because you haven't bound me, I cannot bind you.

I am so selfish that I use you in the name of love! I love you only to keep myself well, so you bear no obligation or responsibility in this.