I hate this life. I hate this life. That's all I could say to myself. No chas vshalom, i didn't even let those words enter my mind and i don't remember thinking them, I just felt it with all my heart and with all my soul. Even if and when I thought them, I surely wouldn't admit to myself or to anyone that that was truly the case. I smiled all the time. I was always besimcha. Only a man who has known deep pain and had admitted to himself his pain would have been able to recognize that I was barely part of the living. I had a beautiful smile and it was always painted on my face. My cheek muscles hurt, no, not from strain but from lying. How long will this lie last. Sometimes I wished someone would come over to me and hug me. I saw some kind people, I wished they would have walked over and seen my pain and said, 'tell me, what's going on?'. In a way, I hoped they'd never come. What would I say? How could I answer that question? I didn't really know what was going on but the ache was so great that there had to be something going on. I remember one day in the midst of a distressing time, I started crying to my Rebbe. I wanted Ahavas Hashem. I felt that my Rebbe was on a very high level of purity, clarity and love of God. I wanted that. I wanted him to tell me the secret. He probably realized that there was something wrong with me but perhaps not aware enough to know the kind of help I needed. I needed peace. I didn't need the love of God, I needed love. I needed safety. I needed to feel that things were going to be ok but since things were never ok, I didn't know that I was in pain. I didn't know that anything was wrong so I didn't look or ask for help. I remember once sitting next to a kind older yeshiva bachur. Oh, I was aching so much, I must have hinted to him that something was wrong. because I didn't know what, I didn't put words to it and because he heard no words, he didn't know. I remember feeling 'fuck (of course it wasn't that word because at that time, I didn't know that word well enough to think it) I just lost my chance). I felt like I had just gotten as close as I was ever going to get to telling anyone of my pain. Somehow, I knew I had to and that it would have to happen and that I would try my hardest to stop it from happening but that it was so important that it happen.