Cease

Sometimes I really don't think I'm going to make it.

These days I'm a rationalist; I don't believe there is any supernatural, no god, no life after. There is nothing at all beyond this life, and all we can do is live it to the fullest. That has to be enough, because there is no more. And most of the time, that's enough.

But at the same time life is brutal. It is a terrible tragedy. Pain is far more sure than pleasure, far more inevitable, far more constant.

And sometimes I don't want to go on. I crave an end. I think of nothingness and think that's what I desire most.

I try to drag myself away from that craving- I think, just one more day, who knows what will happen next? So many years I've succeeded in facing yet another day. If nothing else, there are others who need me- and I always knew I might outlast all of them, the cruel irony, that I will keep living on when all that I love is gone. It always seemed like the most natural end to this particular life. I will die mourning, and there will be none left to mourn me. I imagine being old, bent, feeling pain in my body, my heart, my soul, and somehow know it's my destiny.

But tonight I'm wishing for darkness and silence, and of not even having a way to sense that...I'm thinking that right now, if there was any way, I could cease.

It evokes such pain and significance
What was once, is reduced to remembrance
And the generations pass without recompense
What pretension! Everlasting peace
Everything must cease