The night had been black. The day was darker still. The rains that had hammered through the night barely gave way to dawn. The dawn finally broke into a thousand ugly shades of grey. Green had never existed here. Now even red, blue, yellow and others ceased to exist, only black and grey - remnants of a violent senseless night.

I could remember a beautiful line from an ancient poem "black heart scarring darker still, but there's no sun shining through..."

On this dark morning I stand motionless on the deserted street. The freezing water coming down in sleets of ice cold drops. Water trickles on skin; glaciers carving the slopes of a prehistoric mountain - abrasive action and writhing pain. Soaked like a half dead fish out of water - drenched inside out in agony. It is 6 am and  sleep continues to elude for 72 hours or maybe more. But none of this mattered anymore. If god was around he hated me with divine fury.

I looked up the sky through the rain. It was hard to see as the big drops tried to push the eyes shut. The clouds could not be seen, just water falling from void. The drizzle accelerated and the heavens began to open up in the morning calm, trying to crush everything below. Nervous system remained incapable of movement or linear thought. The involuntary thoughts had to stop, but they wont. Guilt, anger, reproach, affliction, despair, on and on in a loop - mechanical and mercilessly iterative. It persisted for days and nights. Weeks seemed like years and sleep played hunger games. New vistas of insomnia opened up. Unihemispheric slow-wave sleep is a sleep in which one half of the brain is at rest, while the other half remains alert in an involuntary spasm. The suffering continued unabated like rains in a rain forest. Three times a day I wanted to end the suffering and jump from the 4th floor window of the room. It would be painless, especially if some plan made the head hit ground first or better if I attempted to fly like a proud eagle above the the iron rods rising violently from an unfinished construction site below. The rail roads presented an incredibly industrial and gruesome end - almost fit for a man. But searing pain is the way to go. I decided to live.

As I write this I am still alive. I feel my heart beating and my blood pushing through the veins. I can feel my skin and the flesh under it. Smoldering volcanoes have died into hot gases and hard rocks. I think of the hopeless nights I looked up the sky and through the rains into the dark and I wondered if I will ever survive this despondency. But I did survive.

Two months later, today I am sitting on the rock and breathing smoke, fire between my fingers rolled into an agent of death. Night is paler than usual, especially after the black day. Clouds have threatened to hammer the earth all day but remain impassive yet. The crimson of the west has died down to almost black. The lake shimmers with images of neon signs on the other side. No masonry is visible from this distance but the outline of the city rises from the damp shores through the smoke - ruthless and stolid. Calm prevails like the one before an enormous storm. Smoke gushes out of my lungs and meets alcoholoids rolling downhill. The avalanche creates a potent mix, powerful enough to be able to sedate a man away from the pains. But today I drink to life. I have a breather, a brand new life and the loveliest girl on this planet. May be god did not hate me after all. He was just mercifully indifferent. Cheers to my life. Cheers to god.

"That which does not kill us makes us stronger."

- Friedrich Nietzsche