the escape hatch is always there.
the sign, it's letters bright and red, flickers in the infinite nothingness that was my mind. the door, which was the only thing visible through the fog of the moment, had opened, showing a bright white light; an all encompasing void.
and yet, at the same time, the door has shut, trapping me in my own mind, my mind of nothing. or, not of nothing, but the lack of something.

and i took a step forward, toward the open-shut door. the vastness, or lack thereof, seemed to pulse under my foot. i reached my hand out to that shut-open door, and yet my hand seemed to disappear.

and then my eyes open, flooded with light.
i had died, i know that for sure. but which part of me had died?
my physical body? had my body rotted? no, no, it's still breathing.
i had died mentally. for those brief moments, i had been nothing, nowhere, nohow, never. i had been gone, and it didn't feel bad. or good. but it didn't feel bad.
and- and that: the lack of feeling, the lack of existence, that is what i wish for. i wish to not die, but not to live. i wish not to continue, nor to stop.

and that open-shut door, that white oblivion, that black void, that lack of color, light, feeling, thought, work, life, strife, love, control, fights, all of nothing, that shut-open door, that is the constant state in which i live.
my mind, broken in two, half to follow, half to stay.
"RUN!" i scream, anchored to the missing floor, "YOU NEED TO LEAVE!"
"STAY!" i scream, running on an endless missing track, "YOU NEED TO STAY!"

and this is why, in most cases, i obsess over oblivion. that unhopeful nothing. that nothing something.