Life.

Life is cruel.

The very basic notion and law of this world that nothing is infinite. Nothing is meant to last nor endure. Not even the world itself. Everything slowly withers and dies, skin crumbling off like ash in a strong breeze.

Everything except for cruelty.

And you can see it all in the eyes of man. Man crouched and huddled away from the storm of life, hammering down hail, flashing lightning as if to announce an inevitable triumph. Man with his eyes full of hatred and spite with nothing but a hollow soul occupying his shell.

And it’s all Life’s fault.

Think about it. What has life done but given us gifts of love, friendship, and family. You grow up believing that these people are constants. Unchangeable variables in the mathematical equation of what your life is, and all that will be; for family is here to stay, aren’t they?

Fucking lies.

There is no equation. There is only chaos.

There is no love. There is only loss.

There is no gift. There is only pain.

Old habits die hard, they say. What they don’t tell you that these old habits, these constants of love, die quite easily. All it takes is one illness. Such a glorious and magnificent struggle against death, but alas Death never loses. They take that one last romantic breath, mutter their last words, eye cast to the Heavens, and their golden soul rushes to meet God and all their beloveds.

There is no romantic last breath. There is only the ragged sharp intakes of pain she takes while writhing in the bed, like force feeding her cyanide with her limbs tied down. There is only the beeping and clanging of the machines and the syringes pumping poison into her body with false promises of life. Their eyes are not cast above to see the Heavens they sorely miss. Their eyes are broken and cracked with the wracking pain that has hacked their bodies and has them kneeled in front of Death with prayers of mercy and relief that come too late. There is no golden soul. There are only the final convulsions with her face clouded with confusion and the silence that follows that heavy thump when all lays still.

Life is a joke. An enemy. A Trojan horse. It gives you love only to steal it away violently and viciously. It’s a sadistic Master that grants you all the elated feelings it can provide, just to watch you fall into a pit of pain and despair when It has the whim to take away all what was given.

Love is not a gift. It’s a shark loan.

I’ve seen what life can do. Life has given me a family full of love and adoration, which I was cursed enough to be surrounded by. At the age of 9, I started watching these loved ones shot down by Death. None were easy deaths. None were “oh she died in her sleep, loving dear” deaths. Cancer. Heart attacks. Operation complications. Drowning. Car crashes. Those who weren’t dying had diseases or accidents that carried a lifetime mountain of pain.

Then you have me.

I have a slight heart problem. Not fatal yet, but could be. So considering the circumstances, I am the healthiest in the family. I am also the most damaged. I am a mirror that has been trampled upon and smashed into dust till the reflection of who I am, my identity, has become specks of dust carried by the smallest of breeze. I am the one who has to reassemble whatever pieces of glass I can find to keep this identity together. I am like Frankenstein’s monster, sewn together from rotten body parts that are no longer viable to host a life. Each time the mirror the breaks, less pieces are found and less of me is there.

Kind. Understanding.

These are things I were, thing I still try to maintain. Underneath these faux layers of what I pretend to be, exists another being. One full of barely-contained rage and spite. A hunger for destruction for the sake of malice and nothing more. A thirst for revenge. Life must pay for its cruelty, and that being shall be the means to an end. This being has no thought for the cost of life, neither others nor mine. It is devious and cunning, and prepared to manipulate, cheat, blackmail, lie, and destroy for the sake of achieving whatever goal it may have.

On my greatest days I can shove this thing into a cage and contain it.

On others, I embrace this malice within me.

Life created this malice.

Life broke me and gave it power.

Life must pay.

Life is cruel.