“I am starting to hate existing less, a thought that at one point, seemed unfathomable. “I will always wish for the blood to stop coursing through my veins.” I remember how that thought sat in my brain, how I let it eat at me. I screamed, I yelled, I kicked. “I will always pray to be six feet under the ground.” I blew out the candles for my eighteenth birthday. Why does life have to be so long? I etched lines into my skin. I carved mountains, and rivers, and valleys, and dunes. I made art where there was none. I painted pictures of what I wanted to see, what I thought should be there. I sculpted a person as hard as rock. I used tools as sharp as steel. I only knew how to destroy, I forgot how to build. Plastered on smiles, words like swords. I feigned rays of sunshine, whilst throwing myself in a thousand different directions. Anything to make you want me. Anything to make me care. I am staring to hate existing less. Today I am an existentialist, tomorrow a Buddhist. I am both sinner and saint, I do not know how. Uncertainty is nothing new. “I am whimsical,” I say to you, as you try to strip me of my wings. But I want nothing tying me down. You don’t know how it is to live without gravity. You do not understand. You could not understand. Self destruction is the only way I stay alive. There are magic stones that make me not fear. I am in a prison of my own security. I am well versed in the act of nonexistence. This I can do well. I may not know how to live, but I know how to die. I need it, I crave it. I have the world at my fingertips and I toss it to the ground. “Not this life,” I say, as if I can pick and choose when consciousness is worth it. This skill is not only learned, it is taught. I am a byproduct of passive aggressive, a reminder of your mistakes. Too much, too much, too much. “Yes, I accept your pleas,” I say to the world. I will make myself small. I will shrink into nothing. I wait for the day the sun will rise. I long for the day to slay my dragons with a shining blade of steel. It does not come. This time I am quiet. This time I stop asking and I wait for my soul to speak. I am not patient, but I don’t have the will to fight. Tenacity only got me so far. And it is in the silence, where I found the strength to let it in. As smooth as a wind, subtle, somber. I let it come inside of me. It whispers, and this time, I will allow it to be true. It is in the silence that I find my salvation. I am starved and bruised and hollow, but I know I am not done. This whisper is my battle cry. I will wait for my voice to catch up. I will sing it from mountain tops. I will soon say it, those magic words: “I am starting to hate existing less,” and I will mean it.”