Just When Everything Was Making Sense

When I was a child, I believed that when someone said or did a certain, very specific thing, they'd be transported to another, more happy world. The difficulty was in finding what that "thing" was. I mostly believed it was a humanitarian effort; after you spend a certain number of hours helping the homeless or volunteering at a battered spouse shelter, an angel would confront you in the parking lot and, just like that, you'd be gone forever to a better place.

Take it in another direction and maybe it'd be an alien race watching over us, rather than some godlike force. That'd be interesting, too.

I think I invented it as a way of coping with everything. The sad thing is, it's all been downhill since then. Things just get more and more difficult. As things get more difficult, though, you also find more reasons to stay alive. Or do you? I don't know. Maybe those who commit suicide are the ones who realize just how bad the world is, but they don't have anything or anyone keeping them on the planet.