I was reading Brel's poem

Chacun sa Dulcinéa
Qu'il est seul à savoir
Qu'un soir de pleurs, il s'inventa
Pour se garder un peu d'espoir

Par elle, par sa Dulcinéa
Ou par l'idée d'icelle
L'homme rebelle devient un Dieu
Voilà qu'il vole et même mieux
Cueille des lunes du bout des doigts

and its immediate follow up:

Mais cependant si tu es de ceux
Qui vivent de chimères
Rappelle-toi qu'entre les doigts
Lune fond en poussière
Il n'y a pas de Dulcinéa
C'est un espoir fané
Malheur à qui peut préférer
Le verbe être au verbe avoir
Je sais son désespoir

and as I too, know their despair, them who live from chimera. I was reading this, and was wondering on the universality of such torments, that so exactly capture mine. Does everybody know? Does everybody live through this? Has to pass through this? I almost escaped that. Why should I pay this price? The poem tells us so: «Chacun sa Dulcinéa...» I had almost escaped that. Why should I pay this price?

There is a relief in the universality of pain. But there is also selfishness in that pain craves to be excruciating. For Quijote, Aldonza becomes Dulcinéa. Isn't my punishment enough that my Aldonza will not? And then it stroke me... in the torture of a headache, of feeling too warm and feverish and tired and alone and dejected, and with this feeling of an inner struggle of existence churning through my stomach, it stroke me: my crafted, personalized ailment is the totality of the rejection despite the flexibility of the request. It is the asking to someone anything between the smallest transcendental number and the infinite, and receiving zero, anything between a coffee and a bloodline, and finding that whatever, anything between small talk and love, and being offered not even contempt. Silence, emptiness, void, not even.

I have the feeling that if someone would tell me, look, I'd kill myself for you if you'd ask me to, but I understand this would be unsettling, too much, not matching your intensity, so I'll content with a smile, that would be enough, if someone would tell me that, I would smile, at least at the candor, at the excess, at the situation. I wouldn't not exist, I wouldn't be in the past, or in the future, I wouldn't be dead or unborn, I would smile. Knowinf myself, I would probably take it all, too. But that's only me.

If there is anybody else who felt like this, I want to find them and tell them:

I know your despair

.