Note to the Reader:
This book contains themes of death, grief, depression, and suicide. It is not an
instruction, not an invitation, and not a performance. It is a testimony: a mind
speaking plainly, sometimes sharply, often imperfectly, searching for a clean
sentence in a messy world.
If you came here for comfort, you might find it in unexpected places. If you
came here for certainty, you won’t.
About the Book
This is the story of Elias, told through his thoughts. He thinks like some
people breathe: constantly. He feels, but he mistrusts feelings. He calls belief
a fog and facts a blunt object. He speaks as if he has already made a
choice—and then spends the book proving how difficult choices actually are.
About the Author
Shamsaddin Amanov (b. 1999, Azerbaijan) wrote the first edition in 2019.
This Second Edition revisits the same voice with cleaner structure, clearer
English, and fewer detours—without sanding off the roughness that makes
the testimony honest.
MY DEATH
03:39, Lund, Sweden.
After everything I’ve thought, I’ve reached the last thought: end it.
Not dramatically. Not with a soundtrack. Not as a threat. Just as a conclusion.
How can a person be sad and calm at the same time? I don’t know. I only
know that I stood up. I looked at myself in the window and noticed my
hair—how long it has been since I last cared? I tied it up and said, quietly,
like I was greeting a stranger:
“Hey. I haven’t seen you in a long time.”
Let me make the ending explicit. I am not writing a clever fiction that tricks
you. I’m not hiding the final page behind a plot twist. I will die at the end of
this book.
And no—this is not a suicidal invitation. I’m not asking you to copy anything.
Life is not a group project. If you are here because you feel close to the edge,
take that seriously. Talk to someone. You deserve more than your worst hour.
So why write this?
Because some people live in their hearts.
I live in my head.
And my head doesn’t shut up.
This testimony is what happens when a mind refuses to stop—when it keeps
turning the same stone, hoping the underside will finally explain why the
stone exists at all.
If you don’t like a paragraph, you have two options:
1) Skip it.
2) Write feedback on blank paper and send it to me. I’m everywhere.
Welcome to a lot of skipping.
THE WINDOW
I am at home. I lean out of my only window like it’s a ritual. I smoke. I listen
to the rain. And I try to trap the smell of it in my mind forever.
Forever—whatever.
The smell has a name: petrichor. Chemistry explains it. I don’t care about the
chemistry. What I care about is this:
A smell can unlock a whole person.
Write “vanilla” on a page and someone will smell it in their mind—without
vanilla being present at all. That should terrify you a little. We like to believe
reality is outside us. But so much of reality is manufactured inside us, quietly,
without consent.
Even emotions seem to have a scent. When someone enters a room, you can
sometimes feel their fear before they speak. When someone is truly happy,
something in the air softens. Maybe it’s body language. Maybe it’s chemistry.
Maybe it’s both. Either way, the mind records everything, then lies about
what it recorded.
And here is the more brutal truth:
If the mind manipulates something as simple as smell, what do you think it
does with meaning?
NOTHINGNESS
Try this:
Think about nothingness for ten seconds.
You can’t.
You can close your eyes—and still you’re watching. You can silence the
room—and still you’re hearing. Even when you “think of nothing,” you are
thinking of the idea of nothing, which is still something. A shape. A color. A
space. A black screen. A quiet room.
We can imagine only the concept of nothingness, not nothingness itself.
So, in a way, it’s not “nothing.” It’s nothink about nothing.
Now take it further.
If you asked two people to imagine nothingness, would they imagine the
same nothingness? No. One might imagine a black void. Another might
imagine white fog. Another might imagine sitting in a silent room.
People argue about God the same way.
You can’t ask someone born blind to imagine red. They’ve never met red.
They can’t build it from scratch. So when religious people say, “You can’t
see God, but He exists,” there’s a poetic argument hidden inside it:
We are all blind. Maybe we can’t see what’s real.
Fine. That’s poetic.
But I’m not sure poetry should run the world.
WE ARE NOT SPECIAL
You want the simplest, ugliest sentence?
You are not special.
Not because you’re worthless. Not because you can’t love, build, heal, create.
But because the universe did not design you as a main character.
You are the final product of unawareness—of biology that didn’t ask
permission, of history that didn’t consult you, of randomness that doesn’t
apologize.
People hate this idea. They call it depressing. They call it nihilism. But
sometimes “specialness” is just a blanket we pull over our heads so we don’t
have to look at the cold facts.
The worst part is that the belief “I am special” often becomes the foundation
of a whole life. And when that foundation cracks, people fall into panic.
So they replace thinking with believing.
And believing, most of the time, is not courage.
It’s an escape route.
BELIEF, FEAR, AND CONTROL
Why should I fear a creator who claims to love me?
The “testing God” idea is what I can’t stand: a life designed like an exam. The
rules are unclear, the grading is invisible, and the punishment is eternal.
Fear is old. Humanity used to fear cars, then planes, then the ocean, then the
moon. Fear shrinks as knowledge grows.
But religion doesn’t shrink that way. In many minds, it grows stronger when
the world gets more complex—because complexity is exhausting. Belief can
be restful. Belief can be a shortcut.
People say, “Religion gives purpose.”
True. It does.
It gives a script. It gives a role. It gives a reason. And when your pain needs a
reason, religion offers one immediately. Not necessarily a true one. But a
usable one.
And in history, usable beliefs often win.
Even dictators understood this. If you want to control people, you don’t only
police their bodies. You police their souls
CRIME, MORALITY, AND THE “GOOD PERSON” PROBLEM
Here’s a question that makes people uncomfortable:
If there is no God—no heaven, no hell—what stops a person from doing evil?
Some will answer, “Empathy.” Others will answer, “Law.” Others will
answer, “Conscience.”
All valid. But not complete.
Because here is the dark truth: many crimes go unpunished. Many evil people
die peacefully. Reality doesn’t guarantee justice. Nature doesn’t care. The
universe does not keep a moral scoreboard.
So belief becomes a social tool. It adds an invisible camera. It adds
consequence when the law fails. It says: even if no one sees you, someone
sees you.
And yes—this can reduce crime.
But it also creates a society of spiritual surveillance: doing good because
you’re watched is not the same as doing good because you understand
goodness.
So morality becomes a question:
Are you a good person… or a trained person?
GUILT, THE SUPEREGO, AND IDENTITY
Guilt is one of the most human things we do.
It hurts. It punishes. It keeps us awake at night. But it is also a guardrail.
Freud had his trio: id, ego, superego. I won’t worship Freud like a saint. But
the model catches something true: human beings contain a violent animal and
a judge inside the same skull.
The superego is that judge. It humiliates you. It shames you. It whispers,
don’t.
Without it, a person can become terrifyingly free. Free to do damage without
regret. Free to treat others as objects. Free to act out every worst impulse with
no inner consequence.
So as much as guilt feels like a disease, it is also evidence that you are not a
monster.
Identity works the same way. The problem is rarely the identity itself. The
problem is the inner courtroom:
“Is it fine?”
“Am I allowed to be this?”
“Will I be punished for being myself?”
A person loses years not because they are broken, but because they keep
asking permission to exist.
MEMORY: FALSE, FRAGILE, CONVENIENT
Memory is not a recording.
It’s a story.
You can plant stories in people with confidence and timing. You can say,
“We met before,” and watch their mind scramble to cooperate—because the
mind hates uncertainty. It prefers a wrong answer to no answer.
That’s why false memory is common. That’s why déjà vu exists. That’s why
people misremember not only events, but feelings, motives, entire selves.
And once you accept this, a lot of human pride collapses:
We argue as if our minds are courtrooms.
But our minds are theatres.
And we are not only the actors.
We are also the audience, applauding ourselves for scenes that never
happened exactly as we claim.
END OF GAME
03:41, Lund, Sweden.
I told you earlier: I don’t know why I exist, but I know why someone might
decide not to.
My mother, Sara, was born in 1965. She studied, she lived, and at some point
her body began to betray her. Illness doesn’t only damage the body. It
rewrites identity. It turns a person into a patient. It turns privacy into
paperwork.
She believed in God. Truly.
And still—belief did not protect her from suffering. Belief did not negotiate
with biology. Belief did not stop the slow theft of dignity.
I am not angry at her for ending her life. I’m angry at the silence between us: I
never got to ask what the final weight was. Pain? Fear? Exhaustion? Love,
even? The kind of love that tries to reduce burden for others?
I grew up without a mother.
One of my creators was dead.
So, in my private language: God was dead too.
People romanticize death. Or they demonize it. I don’t do either. I think death
is the most honest thing life contains: the one conclusion no philosophy can
debate away.
I also know this: many people die for stupid reasons—panic, heartbreak,
humiliation, money. Life is bigger than those reasons. Life is also unfair
enough that some people carry pain that doesn’t look “stupid” at all.
If you want the cleanest definition I can offer:
Suicide is the deactivation of material existence in one step.
Not heroic. Not romantic. Not moral. Not immoral. Just final.
And if the universe has judges—if there is an afterlife—then here is the last
“game” that haunted me:
Do you tell the truth and risk punishment?
Do you lie and risk punishment?
Do you choose a belief for safety?
Or do you admit you never knew?
End of game.
And if this testimony has any dignity, it’s this:
I tried to be honest inside a world that rewards certainty more than truth.
03:41.
Lund, Sweden.
End.
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