And when he was suddenly gone -- no, not just gone, dead in every possible meaning of the word to me because of what he had done -- I found doubt. And what’s more than that, I found my own slow spiral downward into the depths of hell. A world where shadows scared me, and the thought of people with their eyes looking through me, seeing what I really was underneath all of this shine and polish. When one domino falls, others follow and that is where I was. That is where I’d been until yesterday morning, when suddenly I was in the rain, looking out at a sea of those same faces that terrified me and I saw you.

Benjamin R. Smith