For as long as I can remember I have always been haunted by what I now refer to as "The Pressure". This hideous beast contains all that is wrong with the world - doubt, restlessness, greed, anger, love, hate. The Pressure is what makes me vibrate impatiently at the thought of standing in one place for another moment. The Pressure is cripples me with sly thoughts about rent and food. The titanic thick blackness waits just out of view at every turn - waiting to envelop me at any sign of vulnerability. The way your eyes vibrate within your skull and how your vision becomes nothing but a mess of colors and shapes in times of great rage - that's The Pressure.

The Pressure is not a purely malignant force - in today's world of ceaseless gray one would be a fool to assume that anything can be described by such flimsy words as "good" or "evil". The Pressure made me who I am today and even as these words leave my fingertips it is still shaping me. Molding me. The Pressure allows us to see the true nature of our structural fortitude. Perhaps - like the countless others in this world - I am sedimentary and thus destined to be crushed into more and more smaller pieces until I resemble sand. But maybe, just maybe I am a piece of coal just waiting to turn into a dazzling, unbreakable, diamond.