More Than This

by Patrick Ness

It was solitude, but it was solitude that wasn’t lonely. Solitude that could sort things out.

Relief because at last, at last, at last. At last, there didn’t have to be anymore, didn’t have to be anymore burden, anymore weight to carry.

He was here. He had made it this far. There was so very little distance left to go, and he was the one who had brought himself here. It was almost over. He was almost there. He had never, not once in his life, felt this powerful.

Please, was all he thought. Just the one word, echoing through his head. Please.

But it didn’t make him free. He woke up here. Here where there is nothing. Nothing but a loneliness more awful than what he’d left. One that is no longer bearable –

“We have to lie to ourselves to live.

if you give a human being a chance to be stupid and violent, then they’re going to take it, every time.

I’m the only real thing I’ve got,

I wanted so badly for there to be more. I ached for there to be more than my crappy little life.

And there was more. I just couldn’t see it.