January 28, 2003 | 3:48 PM

It�s so so strange to look back on something and wonder if maybe you weren�t seeing things the way they were at all, but rather the way you wanted them to be. Is it possible that you can spend so much time with people and not even know them? What a strange and scary prospect.

And if you didn't actually know them, is it possible that maybe you weren't being yourself either and that they never really knew you? That everyone was just playing a role, that your relationships were nothing more than a big hall of mirrors, each person merely reflecting everyone else, lacking any really substance?

Could I have been living in that scene from The Lady From Shanghai for so much time and not have realized it until the bullets hit the glass?

Jesus. That really gives me the creeps.