My knees cracked and my stomach quivered, but my hand held steady without a fret. I smoked, until the red in the ash fell to the ground with the rest of my dignity, and burned it until it was no longer bright.

There was something about myself that I loathed. I was insecure and easily manipulated. I was petty and easily aggravated.

All of the qualities I hated to see in others, I sought out in myself.

Whatever it was to make me feel normal.

I burned myself with the fading embers of a cheap thin cigar, and still I felt nothing .

When I woke in the morning I would come to see of what I had done to myself and it changed nothing.

I was still the lonesome wanna-be I was before.

The raised white scan of skin said nothing to me but a break for freedom.

But what freedom was I looking for?

I was looking in all of the wrong places in just the wrong time.

I wanted to feel something.

And the white and ash that caressed my skin didn't cut it. I wanted something even more painful than I had experienced before.