You don't think you believe in God.

The revelation makes the world around you spin, sending waves crashing through your mind and heart. Everything you've been taught since you were a child falls to pieces and for a moment you can't breathe. Then a child laughs in the distance and the breath rushes back into your lungs. Still, your head feels numb. What do you do? What can you do? You've just had the greatest spiritual realization of your life and you can't share it with anyone.

Your supposed best friend hasn't talked to you in a month and you feel like if you try to contact her, it will just drive the wedge between you even further, although you aren't quite sure you know what caused it in the first place. Was it something you did? Was it something you said? Or is it something worse? Was your unforgivable transgression not being there when she needed you the most?

Anymore, you really don't know. The numb space in your head is still there and your world seems frozen. Even while children jump and shout and play their days away around you, you feel there is no way to mark time. No growth as a person, stagnating instead into the infinite abyss of your days. It feels as if there is no way out and each path seems to lead down a different road of self-destruction.

The easy way would be the ibuprofen sitting there on your bookcase. At night, it is within reach, unassumingly, horrifyingly normal for it to be there. Another way might be the exact-o knife hiding among your pens on the desk. It is another item that is terrifyingly standard for the room of an "artsy" girl. A little nick… In the wrong place… The blood wouldn't stop soon enough for them to save you. But that would hurt. And you couldn't make it look like an accident. While all of these routes are devastatingly final, you feel as if that blade is so final and resolute with no other interpretations.

However… Something that could very easily look like an accident… Something always called an accident at first glance anyways… Because why else would someone crash their car? That would be a very different final interpretation. But you don't want to damage someone else's property. That would be horrible.

And with that you come full circle. All of this is horrible. It's not something that is okay or normal to think about. You want to get rid of the numbness in your head. Even as you sit here, trying to keep the world from crashing down around your ears, you know what you are contemplating is not beautiful, is not fun, is not pleasant and you still can't keep your mind from straying down that horrible path.

While those roads would affect many in fleeting thoughts, you know there is only a small list of people who would mourn the loss of you on a daily basis. That would be your mother, your father, your sisters, your boyfriend… Those are the only people who see you every day. Your cats wouldn't even comprehend enough to miss you.

There is no real point in this contemplation. You are too scared, too afraid to commit that final sin, not against God as you don't believe in his existence, but against yourself and your family. Your family would be the real ones to suffer after you're gone and therefore you cannot much further take this route. You can look down these roads, maybe even take the first step, possibly even the second. But the end of that path is not something you will ever see. You know that, but still the roses look tempting even with their thorns.