While this may be a difficult truth to believe, it is, in fact, a truth: I am an immortal.

I was born – as best can be recalled and reported, according to the record keeping of the day – in the year 1273, in what is presently the country of Turkey. My parentage and upbringing was humble, and nothing about my lineage should have led me to believe that I should live forever. Filled with the energy and insanity of youth, I once fought with a man – presumably over something as petty as a woman, although the memory faded long since – and he brained me with a rock. My family reasonably buried me, but my wounds healed within a day, and I dug myself out of the ground.

I will not bore you with the specifics of my adventures in the years immediately following. Suffice it to say that I acted with great regard for abandon and little for propriety. My appearance had ceased to deteriorate commensurate with my age, and soon injury itself became foreign to me. With increased exposure to danger came increased resistance, and within mere centuries I bypassed the need for food, drink, sleep, shelter, or breath. I do, however, indulge in each fairly regularly, purely for pleasure.

With immortality has come a perspective unique, I assume, to one as long lived and well traveled as myself. Going from the highest wealth to utter destitution – investing heavily in the cultivation of an artist who is considered utterly unmemorable – then returning to wealth over decades, I determined my one great advantage: I will always win. Some might see in this arrogance, while I see only inevitability.

I write this letter – unsigned and without recipient – by tradition, each year on the anniversary of my “rebirth.” I see little need for secrecy, for if I am captured, I will watch my prison crumble around me, then walk free. Many fear the solitude such a life would entail, but I became reliant solely upon my own company lifetimes ago. No, the only thing I fear is the predicted utter, heat death of the universe, millennia hence. That will be the only surprise left to me.