[ wp ] Years ago , you made a deal with the Devil to be granted a single wish . All your memories of the deal were then wiped . Years later , your wish is fulfilled and you are about to find out what price your younger self was willing to pay to make it come true .

Stop. 
 
 Close your eyes, stop reading this, and ask: `` What really matters?'' 
 
 When you clicked this link, you wanted entertainment. You wanted a response to a question that has been asked so many times that it's lost its meaning: `` What do you ask for in a deal with the devil?'' 
 
 This is not some story where a deal was made out of some vanity. This is not a tale of some bastard gaining wealth or power or privilege. This is not a legend where I regal you with a trick used to overcome my agreement and get to keep my reward. 
 
 This is a reflection of my own loss. An outcry of rage at the rest of the damn world. A soul breaking with the deepest level of regret. 
 
 I should not have suffered for you. I should not have to KEEP suffering for you. 
 
 What do you choose to do with your freedom? Your privilege? All your wealth and power? Here you sit, reading this response, and you give no thought to the'how' or the'why'. A few of you study some small aspect of the world, of history, of science. But none of you stop and give pause to the idea that you cause so much suffering to all the others. To me. To us. 
 
 Each time you take at the suffering of others, the pain... 
 
 Each time you laugh at the weak, the pain... 
 
 Each time you focus on the small, forgetting the whole, the pain... 
 
 Each time you allow a tyrant, a society, a corporate body to desecrate the others... 
 
 My God, the PAIN... 
 
 I made a deal long ago with That Which Put Us Here. You squabble relentlessly over what that is called, or what banner to rally under to understand it. I asked It not to judge so harshly, to allow this experiment to continue. To let the pain go onward. I believed at the time that things could, and would, and **must** get better. That others would wake up and SEE. 
 
 I am so tired. 
 
 I am so betrayed. 
 
 I was so deceived. 
 
 And the pain... 
 
 Call me whatever name you like. Fight wars over it. Kill each other. Cause more harm. Rip more children from the love of home to the hate of battle over what to call me, to kill over what school of thought I belong to. 
 
 I belong to none of you. Not anymore. 
 
 That Which Put Us Here did, for a time, let me be removed from the suffering, the hate, the carnage. It let me forget what I had asked. It let me watch instead as It does. It simply asked that after some time, I look again and ask if this should all continue. 
 
 The price I paid for my wish was the greatest any could ask for. Not the pain. Not the ever growing, hideous, all consuming agony. 
 
 No. My price, paid for all of you, is in doubt. 
 
 And, I realize now, here in the end, that you are all devils. And you have won. 
 
 Fine then. I say let it burn. 

