It is clear to me now…
I have finally started to understand…
His weapon was not his violence… His anger... or his hate…
His weapon… was my very own mind…

You see, to make a man truly miserable, to crush him beneath you… you do not use brute force…
Physical wounds will hurt, they will incapacitate and they are brutal… They leave scars…
But wounds will heal over time… Skin will heal and blood will flow once more…
Brute force will push the man inside his head… Compress him to make him smaller…
But there is one point… where the man cannot become any smaller…
Where all effort will be wasted… The man still remains…

You fuel him with hatred…
Give him a purpose…
you will make him stronger…
And he will become a better man than you will ever be…

But torture a man from the inside… Get him out of his head and in the open…
Replace his voice of reason with the voice of fear…
Make him afraid of the consequences of his own deeds…
Take away his feeling of security and happiness…
Make him not hate you, but hate himself…
Make him doubt every decision he will ever make…
He will never dare to make a decision again..

The man will dissipate into nothing…
Fade away until nothing but an empty shell remains…
For there is nothing as cruel…
As to let him wander around the world with his body intact…
But his mind shattered…

He will be worse than dead…
He will be a husk, A shadow of his former self…
Days will waste in front of his eyes…
Love will never feel real…
Happiness will never last…
Doubt will never end…
No future in sight…
No purpose but to dwell aimlessly…
No goals, no hope…
Counting days…
Waiting for the final relief…

No matter how much money he will make…
How many people he will meet…
No matter how many successes he will have…
He will never find true pleasure in life…
He will never be able to really enjoy anything…
Without that dark voice... fueled by fear…
Feeding him lies… Pretending to be the voice of reason…

You have done worse than killing him…
For he is beyond death…
He will never walk the world alone…
The rest of his life he will wander with self-hatred and doubt by his side…

You have taken away all he ever wanted…
And what he will ever be…
For you have kept the body…
But destroyed the man…

This is how you ruin a man...
A woman…
A child…
A life…