It was a cold and dark winter night as I made my usual journey home.
I walked quietly, looking at the world with disinterest and not caring about my surroundings, after what had been a long day for me.
When suddenly, I heard the footsteps of a man approaching me. Despite this, I continued to walk undeterred, paying no attention.
But once he got close enough, he spoke to me in a cold and threatening manner, with a gun pointed at my head:
'Give me all the money in your wallet or I'll shoot you!'
Faced with this threat, I immediately decided to surrender and hand over what he had demanded.
After all, it was much better to lose the money I had at that moment than to risk losing my life.
After handing over the money, he let me go, and he left.
It was useless to call someone to report the robbery since I had no idea who the thief was or what I would get involved in, as most of the criminals in this city work for someone else, and it wasn't worth making enemies and risking worse reprisals for so little.
So I sighed resignedly, unaware of what would happen next, wondering if the day would end like that or if something else would happen.
Unaware that something else would indeed happen.
In fact, I was being watched. Not just now, but before, when I had been robbed.
Even though I no longer had money in my wallet, a person who had witnessed everything that had happened was not satisfied.
He wanted more, he didn't want me to just hand over the money I had at that moment; he wanted to take everything from me.
Everything I owned.
You might think he desired a car, a house, or something else, but you would be wrong. He wanted my life.
So, as I was turning into an alley to continue my way back to my lonely house after a sad, boring, and resigned day, I was stabbed.
Probably, since I had no one waiting for me at home and had never been particularly altruistic, my death will go unnoticed, so no one will care about it.
But even so, I did not deserve to die this way, or at least, I did not want to die this way – a useless and pathetic death dictated by the madness of human greed and perversion, which in this world cannot lead to anything.
Because one can die every second, every moment that passes regardless of what we do to avoid it because our life is limited.
We cannot extend it indefinitely and avoid its end, regardless of who we are, what we do, and what we hope for, because death is the only certainty we have.
So all the benefits and all the things we gain are only temporary.
Moreover, there is and has never been, and I doubt there will be, a sure way to defend what we have earned.
Especially if you have earned it because of your greed and perversion, because strength alone is not enough since there is no power, no force, or whatever you want to call it that can be defined as supreme and absolute and can be completely and exclusively yours.
You might think of getting help from other people, forming a group together, but that doesn't work either.
Because the only person someone can really rely on is themselves.
In fact, even if you ask for help from others, who will not be different from you, you will be betrayed at the first opportunity.
In fact, since they are already greedy, selfish, and perverse, they could become so even towards you, betraying you.
They might do it because they now consider you useless, because someone has offered them something in exchange for your death, or even because they have become jealous of you.
Even if you ask for help from those you consider friends, you could be betrayed because maybe you were never that important to them, they might put personal gains first, or in general, the same things listed before.
In the end, it doesn't matter who they are or what their motivation is, the most important thing is that they could betray you and that only you would never betray yourself.
Even when you commit suicide, you do not betray yourself, because at that moment you decided to do it, regardless of what or who caused it.
Because you chose to end it.
The only people you could betray in that case are those who care about you, and your death causes them pain.
When you fall into madness and die because of it, you cannot say that you betrayed yourself.
It was others who betrayed you, because for them you were no longer important enough, because they didn't have enough time to dedicate to you or enough money.
If you die from effects derived from drug and alcohol consumption, even then you cannot say that you betrayed yourself.
You can't even say that others betrayed you.
You did it because they gave you something, something you wouldn't have had normally and wouldn't have felt.
You did not betray yourself because you were aware of what it would lead to and decided it was worth it.
Despite all the talks I've given about betraying oneself and being betrayed by others, I had the most pathetic death.
Despite considering the death of those who were betrayed and then killed to be pathetic.
Because I was killed just for the sake of it, without him gaining anything from it.
Moreover, without even thinking about possible and eventual consequences, as if he already knew that in the end, nothing would happen to him.
As if he only cared about taking my life.
Not even trying to keep me alive, torturing me until I agreed to give him what I owned to then kill me much later, making my death look like an accident.
But none of that mattered anymore, I was dead, and that was what was important.
And so, in the relentless darkness of the night, my life went out like a flickering flame, leaving behind only a faded and insignificant memory.
There was no hero coming to my rescue, no guardian angel or rescuer rushing to save me, no happy ending awaiting me on the horizon.
No earthly or divine justice would resurrect my being from that cold asphalt grave.
My fate had been sealed by the cruelty of fate and the insatiable greed of a faceless stranger.
Only the eternal silence of a world that continued to turn indifferently, while I got lost in the abyss of oblivion.
By now, I no longer even had regrets, I had lived my life making my choices, they might not have always led to what I hoped for, but each time I didn't care.
Because I always managed to understand where and why I went wrong, ensuring that the next time I wouldn't make the same mistakes, and therefore, it would go well.