"Turns out all of my social skills were built on a solid foundation of genuinely liking and caring about people and valuing their well-being and personal fulfillment for its own sake," he says. "That's the reason the loss of my soul is hitting me so hard. I used to be a fucking miracle worker. I could charm blood from a stone. I raised armies and won wars and regularly accomplished the impossible on the strength of my love of helping people and unshakeable personal integrity. And now I do not have those things. But I still have the intensely ambitious nature that drove me to keep throwing myself into the kind of situation where I could accomplish such incredible feats, and the memory of being able to pull it off, alongside the knowledge that if I tried the same thing today I'd fucking die. So I am trapped in my worst nightmare, and my worst nightmare is the loss of the very skills that would most advantage me in escaping it."