text: “There is a difference between taking a life and killing someone. You can take a life and leave the person alive, yet a husk of who they were. A wandering corpse not yet dead. The people who have had their lives taken slunk through the streets just like everybody else, sit behind their desks like everybody else, yet all they feel is the sweet bliss and nothingness that is want of death. What of those who took their lives in the first place? They are left showing humanity the very depths it can reach. The people who take a life from another serve the same purpose as staring into a mirror and whispering words of discouragement to yourself softly, letting your warm breath graze the glass, leaving fog as the hate spews. To take another's life you must be willing to take your own. To commit an act that can leave a person a husk of themselves requires you to be a husk yourself. The problem is you can never tell a husk from a person. Someone who still feels human and actively acknowledges the lives and existence of others and someone who does not look the same. You may ask yourself, what do we do with the people who take lives? Well in all honesty there is no right answer. No way to fix a person beyond repair. No god who can heal enough, no medicine that can cure well enough, no ale that can make you forget enough. What do we do with the people who take lives and what do we do with ourselves are the same questions. We all create husks, we will all become husks, and as the soles on our feet turn to sand as we walk our endless prisons, clinging to the ethereal nights, we will finally be set free in the realization this is the punishment humanity must endure. There is no freedom in death. Only the entrapment of oneself. Like burning a teddy bear and then forcing the stuffing into a box. Once you see what lies beyond you will know. It is unfortunate. Very unfortunate. You will live long, and happy, and you will live this life with a person that you love and trust, and when you are finally at a ripe old age, where death feels like something you fully accept, they will die. They will die and leave you husk without ever meaning to hurt you. A fate I wouldn’t wish on the worst of humankind. I can not claim to know. I can not claim to understand the inner workings of death despite being death himself. It is the curse I bear to understand the human struggle. Humanity can learn every aspect of their being and still live in torture over the mind. The mind is a senseless object. A computer made of fat and flesh molded together to create nothing but chaos we interpret into meaning. Honestly the unknown of one's own mind should be enough to drive all of humankind into bumbling husks. Yet so many persist. So many breath without purpose, blink without love, speak without intent, and yet hold a will to live. Maybe I just don’t understand yet. I can not begin to comprehend the idea of life as a loveless and joyless slog. A long fall into the depth of mud and filth. Yet what is it to live? Some say to live is to breath and function and process light with your retinas. And that's true. That’s what being alive is. Yet it is not living. For one to live one must love not only themselves but others. To love is to live. Yet husks can love and be loved. A husk can feel the same way a human can. Yet they were made into a husk anyway. Weather intentionally or not the expression of love onto a person's self and onto other persons is to invite pain. Others can’t hurt you if you do not feel you deserve anything higher than pain. And you can not hurt yourself if you do not value your own being. To love is to be a husk. To love is to invite your own pain. Yet it is not worth living to not love. Humanity is in constant suffering not because of some wrath or pit of humankind, but because we can experience the best feeling known to man, we can love. Love is the ultimate pain. Sorry for rambling. I lost myself there. Right what was I supposed to tell you? Right I remember. You are dead. You experienced 10,428 sunsets, experienced millions of gust of winds, heard the sound of frogs outside your window on a warm summer's night 38 times, danced with pure and true emotion 5 times, experienced love and heartbreak 3 times, and danced with the idea of death 77 times. Now you’re here, a husk of who you used to be. I was told to give you one memory to live in, just for a while, before I take you. Before you become even less than a husk. “ Your eyes open at a small apartment. A cat sits near the television, rubbing it’s fur gently against it. The couches blanket have been draped messily over it, dishes sit unwashed in the sink, plants shine a dark glossy green in the corner, the fan spins slowly and quietly around the room, the stars and the moon shine through the window. You remember them. You rest your hands gently on their hips, they rest their hands around your neck, you sway back and forth. The room fades away slowly. Each piece of the memory turns to dust and ash before your very eyes. It’s just you, dancing with no one, in an infinite white void. You stop dancing and rest your arms at your side. A soft gust of wind blows by and you feel like you can almost hear the ruffling of a tree's leaves. Then you can’t feel anything at all.