Unknown

First, I thought summer would mark the end of school: of graduating and of moving in with the one person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. And then, I thought it would bring an end to everything I'd held dear; I thought it meant the start of a new life in a different city for him, goodbyes, and thousands of "what if...?". Shortly after that, I believed summer would be something of a reprieve from sorrow and confusion. Now I see that summer was truly a time of anger and of pain, of screaming fights and insults that stick inside the mind for years, of hatred.
I understand now that disappointment should be expected around every corner. Nothing is ever as easy as you want or expect it to be. That's life, isn't it? Ever uncertain, always changing, forever indistinct. I guess the only thing to be said about it is that it's nothing to cry about. After all, what's an adventure without a little bit of rocky sailing?

Purification

I've always believed that with knowledge came pain. In a sense, pain is knowledge. With me, it has always brought a clarity of thought that I've never had in situations where I didn't feel pushed to the very edge of sanity, forced to make a choice between a feverish search for truth, and a loss of everything I hold dear.When backed into a corner, you must evaluate all the options: turn back, forget; stay stagnant, refusing to make a decision; or look forward, seeking truth and desiring growth.
People have always questioned a person's necessity for growth. But truly, what are we without knowledge, without understanding? Does mere "being" dare you to dream -- to achieve? Can bare existence impregnate you with the curiosity required in order to discover all the things we need to know? Science, love, happiness: to achieve any, you must grow, you must learn to adapt, to understand, to sympathize with those around you so that we don't destroy one another.
Let us not forget that Adam and Eve may have been perfect, yes, but they also knew nothing and did not progress. It was a choice that changed the world, as well as them. They brought sin into the world, but sin and pain and death are necessary evils in order to experience redemption.

Paranoia

My purpose in writing now is the same as it has always been: to keep myself in a sane state of mind. Now, the problem with jotting down every little detail of my insanity is that madness, in and of itself, is something that tends to spread, the more people talk about it. The fact that I am able to understand and empathize with the often frightening, disorienting, and delusional paranoia that accompanies insanity makes me think twice about doing such a thing. You know, for your sake.

But there's a catch, of course. Staying completely silent, both in tongue and in pen, means that my own mental claustrophobia can set in at any point. That's not good. Hitting that stage sends my mind into a panicked sort of place, where confusion reigns above every sensible, rational emotion, and my perception is skewed and often chaotic in its conclusions. Do you know what I am saying? I lose control. Nothing I do, say, think, feel is a decision on my part. I become something completely unrecognizable to myself. And, coincidentally, so does the rest of the world.

Solitude

Space. Time. Breathe in. Breathe out. Begin again. Ask questions directed at the silence inside your room and heart and mind. Do you expect answers? Of course you don't. Answers are make-believe here, figments of your imagination created in order to fill an emptiness born of both desire and hopelessness. You know the truth; secretly, we all do. Humans, by nature, are constant seekers of answers, but we are neither sincere enough, nor strong enough, to seek until we find. We settle. Always, we attempt at contentedness when surrounded by lies fabricated inside of ourselves. Such lack of understanding will doom us in the end, don't you think? So just wallow there, in your silence and in your solitude, and forget your questions. Forget God, forget yourself, forget the world, and its people and their problems. Forget time, space, matter, existence -- and simply die. Die, just like the rest of us. You'll soon see how easy it is.