p class="MsoNormal"span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; line-height: 107%; font-family: 'Times New Roman',serif;"Would it ever end? The raging pain that welled up in his stomach and spread through his veins was too much. The pain of never being enough. The pain of being too much. The fiery fingers of regret and self-loathing scratched at him constantly, leaving invisible lines on his already scarred skin. Skin that he himself had scarred during jobs because he was just too tired to care. You see, the scorching that infiltrated him from within never stayed as the burning sensation. He could handle fire; Hell had trained him to adapt to the heat. No, the pain that followed was what drained the very life from him. The flames would die down into nothingness and he too would descend into a numb state. His limbs would slow and become uncoordinated. His eyes would stare at everything and yet nothing at all. His brain would grow spastic; his thoughts would be fast, and yet, feel as though he were underwater. His body movements would become deliberate as it took all of his energy to move a single finger. He would care about nothing and yet everything at the same time. Nothing about himself would matter, but everything else did so he would force himself to do what was necessary. He would get up from the bed even though he wished he could do nothing but lay there and just stop existing. Through muscle memory, he would pull on clothes because his brain was still chained to the bottom of the ocean. Once he dragged himself to the bathroom, his hands would find the faucet and turn the hot water as high as it would go. He would wait for the steam to blur his hideous reflection before plunging his hands in the burning stream. He would accept and relish the pain of the boiling water because the burning would make him emfeel/em. This, however, was short-lived because he was a human and human nature forced him to retract from the origin of his pain. With renewed sadness, he would lean in to look at himself in the mirror again. Here, he did the hardest thing in his life. He would put a smile on his face. He would pull his lips up into an easy crescent that doesn't reflect the pain inside. His smile would look effortless; seamless to everyone around him. But on the inside, he was still breaking. The numbness spread as fast as his contagious smile. He would then go about his day as though he really was the confident person that everyone thought he was. It seemed though that he could fool everyone but himself with his façade. He would make jokes and excuses late into the night because as tired as he was, he could never sleep. Eventually, his eyes would no longer remain open and his body would fold into itself as he gave into the night. The tears that never fell would dry in his eye sockets only to return the next day. After all, the whole process was never a one-day thing. Every morning the fiery regret would wake him and the numbness would follow him around. Every day his face would take on a smile only to drop it in the twilight hours. Every day he would fight the pain all the while preparing for the same battle for the next day. Would it ever end? /span/p