So goes my final hours as a 23 year old. Have I really learned all that much? I wonder when I will cease being a child—when will I start taking responsibility of my life?

What I know best belongs to others, I have taken their ideas, reshaped them into my own. But who am I? An amalgamated construct? True nothingness? I have been seeking salvation in the words of others, in my own words spilled forth randomly, knowing all along that salvation is more than just words, and still I cannot seem to turn the key to open the door, and my mind just plays out continual rehashings of what might have been.

I have no insight into what will be. The future holds no known brightness for me, only glimmerings of imaginings, stray scintilla of hope, burning up in the sky most of the time.

I dare not hope. And yet hope is all that will get me through this, no matter how foolhardy. What madness is in me that I will give my life for an idea, an idea of unproven merit, no less? I want to believe.

But I am afraid. So I am cursed to live this half-life, always staring into candy store windows from the outside.

I am so afraid to open that door, no knowing what’s on the other side, not really. All I know is that everything I know about the other side will be false. I will have mislead myself. Better to die with my illusions than to live knowing the aching truth.

Things haven’t gone half as well as I’ve hoped, though I suppose I ought to take consolation in the fact that things aren’t nearly half as bad as I’ve feared. But I have seen the bottom of how far down I am willing to go, and I am not eager to slide down the whole precipice. I used to think I was obsessed with death, ready to end everything for fear of pain—you can never get used to pain—your body will eventually numb itself, self-delusion, but open your eyes, reach out your hand, and you will return to full suffering.

But she has made me taste life, and I long for it, against all hope. It is a bittersweet realization. Death, as meager as it is, at least I know its superficial shape. I do not have to win the battle or scale the heights in order to [experience] it.

Is it mere sloth? Surely not. If I knew I would attain my heart’s desire at the end of a marathon with Hell istelf as the course, I would attempt it, or at least die trying.

But that fact of knowing that I can suffer and strive and beat my skull into concrete repeatedly all [to] no avail—well, that renders my heart cold. I dare not move, for fear of bringing catastrophe upon myself.

I heard God in the rumbling of thunder today. I saw him in the bright flash of lightning. He sang to me in the piano concertos of Masters. I cannot deny He is there.

I want to believe.

But I do not comprehend the path laid out before me, if there is such a thing.

He wants me to think, and to decide for myself.

I know nothing of the Path to Salvation.

All I know is my heart’s desire.