I don't want to hurt myself. I want to stop hurting.

Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes 'What the hell is water?'

It can become an exercise in trying to get the reader to like and admire you instead of an exercise in creative art.

Te Occidere Possunt Sed Te Edere Non Possunt Nefas Est" ("They can kill you, but the legalities of eating you are quite a bit dicier").

But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?

This is so American, man: either make something your God and cosmos and then worship it, or else kill it.