It starts out as a temporary fix. You tell yourself it won't happen again. All the emotions build up. The stress. The pain. The emptiness. Each thought. Each cut. Each stroke of the blade on the skin. An incision deeper then the last. Until you realize the crave isn't fading away. It becomes second nature to the point where the fixation is greater then your will to live. And when you try to quit you remember the thoughts. The words. And realize that you've become so numb and paralyzed in your own body that the addiction is that much stronger to just feel something. To escape the numbness of your own self. I got so low to the point I felt there was nothing left for me. Just the impulse.        I felt the numbness would stop when my last breath for air did. Before I lost control of myself. But then on the verge of desperation. Verge to reach the rich taste of death, my brother, a child filled with innocence that one could only hope to regain. Came into my room with no words to describe his pain that the ever complexity of his condition of autism would bring. Pain to this day I pray he didn't have to face. At that moment I knew his life was greater then my addiction of the blade could ever be. He was my reason to live and everyday I live for him. From this step on, I immersed myself into the lives of those who reached the dark pit I plummeted myself in. Because you become so numb to the pain you pray to God no one would ever suffer this torment. This agony. This emptiness. Instead of wallowing in the self pity of the abyss of depression I laid out for myself, I instead immersed in my community because the way you get rid of the pain is by stripping it away piece by piece starting from the pieces that belong to others. Because if my brother can live with his constant battle with autism I can fight just like he fights everyday to ameliorate himself. Because his life is worth then the will to relapse. To give up. To give in. He is the reason why I live everyday to improve the lives of others. And with his innocence and struggle and pain to grasp reality I live to one day serve purpose and to enrich the autism community. Because you are lucky to be saved but you are blessed if you are able to impact them. So feed the addiction. But feed it with a greater impulse. And the impulse will drive you to feel again.