Hell Knows My Name; Despair As Home

Is there really no way of saving him at all?

Am I too rational to live?

No. A person can be rational and still love. Whereas it seems that I have opened my eyes for too long, and now I can no longer close them. I feel like someone who has destroyed himself merely to understand the depth of his misery, and when I sank deeper into my own destruction, I felt at home.

Life is a mistake. We were meant to be deformed.

I feel disgust when I realize that I am part of the human race, that I have taken part in this absurd existence. That realization alone can make non-existence seem like the only true form of bliss.

The one who calls life bliss is unaware of the despair of humanity.

I am ready to offer my soul to nothingness simply for the sake of escaping into it, yet even that feels impossible. My soul is too miserable for such an escape; even the devil would tremble before the weight of it.

I don't want to continue living, but I want to continue writing and reading. Can the two exist together?

Hell knows my name.

I feel too much to live peacefully, yet too numb to end my life. Isn't death a philosophy in itself, and life a contradiction of it?

What are we but death?

One can die a thousand times while still living. What am I but the remains of everything that has already died within me?

Can a man be conscious and rational, yet happy and quiet at once?

A man who is trying to live can never be entirely at peace. Perhaps a man is only happy when he is alone, or perhaps solitude merely makes him forget how much he longs to be understood.

What is writing but the act of confessing what you conceal?

The only way one can be accepted as a human being is by suppressing some part of oneself. And to conceal yourself is your first death.

I don't know harmony, but I am well acquainted with anguish. Does that make up for it?

Philosophy is, by all means, deceptive. Life itself is a long-lasting conflict. How can a man who knows these two facts remain completely at peace?

A man is happy only when he allows himself to recognize that he is happy.

And my heart has known despair for so long that it has made despair its pavilion, its home. Whenever I feel even a gush of happiness, I find myself wanting to return to the familiar territory of despair as soon as possible.

Can it be that despair is our home and happiness our exile?

For perhaps it is only through suffering that one becomes painfully aware that he is alive.

How unstructured and futilely I write!

I wish I were a better writer.

And then I realized: perhaps it was not death that I loved, but the idea of death.

Just as a man may love the idea of being loved more than the reality of being loved, the idea feels like heaven, while reality can become wearying and burdensome.

What I loved was the fantasy of absolute escape—the fantasy of having complete control over my own existence, of disappearing from everything that has ever made me feel trapped.

Ah, how many nights I have endured simply by romanticizing the idea of death.

A man cannot go on living without the idea of death.

Perhaps it is death, precisely, that has taught me how to live.

"I love you."

It is precisely knowledge that I seek, and it is knowledge itself that has destroyed me.

Why can't I stick to one topic?

I write so badly.

What is this essay even about?

It is filled with nothing but personal suffering that perhaps no one cares about. It is futile.

And still, I love it.

I do.

Is there really anything more beautiful than a soul revealing its despair rather than concealing it?

And yet, once again, I have endured another day. I suffered through it by performing the seemingly futile act of living.

But this is not a victory. It is merely another day.

And now I have to live another one.

Can there really be a more troublesome thought than realizing that you've survived today and are expected to face tomorrow?

Perhaps we are all unfinished and in deep trouble, and perhaps that is precisely what makes us human.

I've known my misery for too long.

Can I have a drop of harmony?

Ah, no. Who am I to beg for happiness when I have denounced it every time it has come knocking at my door?

Is living an art?

Then I am untalented, and I have failed terribly.

I have the power to question whether I want to remain here or not, yet some part of me still chooses to live.

A part of me wants to.

Perhaps that is enough.

I'm just a fragment in this world full of miracles and accidents. That's all.

Life is a mistake, and we are all nothing but accidents filled with tragedy.

But is that enough to condemn an entire lifetime to suffering?

Perhaps the fact that I am still asking the question means that something within me has not yet given up searching for an answer.

"I love you."

"Why? Do you even have any idea what you're speaking about?"

"I say, in full consciousness and sanity, that I love you. I have devoted all my desires to you."

"Are you pitying my devoured soul?"

"To love is to pity. You've lost yourself; you don't know who you are. I want to make you whole. Devour me, destroy the parts of me that keep me apart from you; just make me one with you. I want to know you until it is too late."

"You're throwing yourself away for nothing. Will you suffer your fate with me? Will you, too, gradually forget who I was?"

"To forget you would be to cease remembering the world itself. It is not obsession; it is despair that has brought me to you. You are my God."

"You shall have my love. Terrifying you look, yet so beautiful that I cannot resist."

"Come and get me. I'm all yours."

"There's no place left for you to go..."