half-past

No, it was of no use - I had not changed, and never would.
There was a soft spot in my nature, a strain of weakness, a
sensitivity that would never harden. All that I longed, and
had striven, to be - cool and stoical, detached and aloof, a
true Spartan - was beyond me. Marked ineradicably by my
singular childhood, by an upbringing in which too many women
had participated, I was, and always would be, the victim of
every sentient mood, the unwilling slave of my own emotions.

The last few lines of A Song of Sixpence by AJ Cronin, my most favourite writer in the whole world. Possibly because of these lines itself. It rains today. And I sit here trying very hard to shrug it all off and slowly, calmly collect the scattered pieces.