Death is a home that is lacking, a home without joy and routine and laughter. A house that, no matter how many lights you turn on or how many sunrises you meet, will feel dark and cold and empty.

Breathing is harder and you can’t cry, because there’s a wall of tension behind your eyeballs, and you can feel the pressure of the tears like a dam, but they won’t move, not yet, because while that dam is cracking, it won’t, not just yet.

It will crack one night, when you are holding yourself and lying awake, in a dark room. It will crack then, and you will keen, and whimper, and wail, and then you will cry. You will sob and scream and survive in soundless agony after that moment of emotion.

That morning, you will get up, and you will leave your once-home. You will never be there any chance you can take to leave, and when you are there, you distract yourself.

It takes death, and dealing with it, to realize that you don’t want to die.

Death is the means to the end and the ends to the mean. Death will have all.