I can feel it... the chance to start over, to live right, to love right, to burn up in a fiery cloud and never again be buried in the mud.

Every time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bones by nameless beasts below.

Here it comes. My inevitable death, ignoring me all those years when I wished for it daily, arriving only after I've decided I want to live forever.

Once again the absurdity of my inner thoughts overwhelms me, and I want to crawl out of my skin, escape my ugly, awkward flesh and be a skeleton, naked and anonymous.

I feel an unfamiliar but pleasant sensation in my lips, tugging them upward. This is... new.

Writing isn't letters on paper. It's communication. It's memory.

All my life I have battled the alarm clock, pummeling the snooze button over and over with mounting self-loathing until the shame is finally strong enough to lever me upright.