What does it mean to be happy? Does it mean to be in a state of perpetual joy? Then how can anyone be happy? No matter what you do, life is suffering, and nothing can change that. Then is it all about mindset? If I think of luscious landscapes and bright bumblebees all day, will I be happy? Nonsense. Whatever happiness is, I know it is hard to find, especially for someone who’s going about to die.

I woke up at 9:00 a.m., three hours after my scheduled death. Soon, a guard entered my cell and gave me my final meal, a single piece of bread. After I finished eating, I waited until I was escorted out of my cell. Walking out, I bid adieu to the creeks, cracks, and crevices that I spent the last fifteen years with.

Through a series of halls, I was stripped, searched, and forced to do a series of things that I do not have time to get into, as I was unconcerned with these. Instead, I thought about what my final words would be, the series of sounds that would define how people will perceive me for the rest of eternity. Some appealed to god, others refused to repent, and I -- well, I had no idea what I was going to say.

Finally, I entered the room with my executioner, a chair strapped to a series of wires. Before, I thought I was going to be saved at the last moment, but now, I understood that I was going to die -- I was going to actually die.

I sat down, and someone put a black mask over my face, causing the light to disappear and the darkness to consume my existence. All sense of time stopped, and I thought.

On June 13th, 2003, I killed my parents. My father was an alcoholic and a failed novelist, my mother an accountant. The latter entered a subject she had no passion for and succeeded, the former did something he loved and failed. They both gave up on their dreams, and they both took it out on me.

I wanted to be a writer, but my parents discouraged me from doing so. As a result, I took the conventional path in life: I went to college, got a degree in a high-paying field, and worked tirelessly, the sole escape being Saturday and Sunday. Still, even then, consciously or not, my parents put me down. Whenever I saw them, they would call me a failure and a disgrace, maybe as a way for them to vent at themselves. Likewise, I blamed them for everything that was wrong with my life.

Eventually, I broke. Somehow, I managed to convince myself that killing them would make me happy. Just as I was a scapegoat for them, they were a scapegoat to me. When the act was finished, though, I felt even worse than before.

Someone said, “What are your final words?”

God, no. God, no. God, for once, just let me be happy, even for a moment. I just want a taste. Something -- anything -- to let me feel for a moment that something means anything, that I’m not a failure, that, in the end, I did something.

He repeated his question, but again, I said nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing meant anything. None of what I do matters. Nothing at all will change anything. The only thing I could change was --

“Please tell me, or I’ll be forced to put nothing on the record.”

At that moment, I realized that I could not control my circumstances, the world, anything really. But I could control how I reacted to those circumstances. Nothing meant anything, except for what I made of it.

I looked up at the officer and said, with the utmost confidence, “I am happy.”

I closed my eyes and accepted the darkness.