A living hell

Hell is a blanket that will not keep you warm.

Hell is unrequited self-love. It echoes like an empty mailbox on Valentine's Day.

Hell is winning the first baseball game of the season, and the last baseball game of the season, and every game in between. It is being rejected when you didn't even know you had applied.

Hell is always thinking about the life you wish you had, the life you hope to have, the life you will never have, and never about the life you do have. It is having everything you ever wanted.

Hell is knowing you are wrong; it is knowing you are right. It is absolute certainty with no room for doubt, for learning, or for growth.

In hell, the damned know themselves as they are, but are unable to change. The dream of heaven is so strong that they can reach out and touch it, but they lack the faith to do so.

When you are in hell, you always get your way.

Hell is a land where the sun never sets and the stars never show their face. It is a land where there is no rest from toil and labor. No one dances in hell. No one laughs. They do have sex in hell, or something like it; but it is a sad and lonely act of desperation as the lost strive for something that they know is beyond them, and it only leaves them feeling empty.

There are no schools in hell, no books. In hell, there is nothing left to learn, nothing left to accomplish. There is nothing left to look forward to.

Hell is the distance between yourself and other people.

The way to hell is paved with no intentions at all; we simply lay it one brick at a time, unthinking, on a long, steady, lonely slope that we tread our entire lives.

Copyright © 2009 by David Learn. Used with permission.

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