It stands before the pilgrim with its long, sharp sword.

You can't shield it out for it is not made of flesh and blood. It's not made of glass or wood, neither is it made of gold nor dirt. Invisible it ain't. It's right there, only it's not made of anything. Immaterial as it is, you can't see it but you know it's there. When a person believes in something that they can't see they call it faith;

The ideology of religion,

The belief in something,

The origin of God.

Without faith we're lost. You can starve and die. You can kill in its name. You can slay yourself in public so long as your faith is protected and unharmed. That thing you've created out of thin air owns you. It tells your heart not to melt when it wants to. You can not shield it out for it is already in there, in your system, your mind, and in your heart. It makes you feel beautiful, powerful, above all. Its surrounding, engulfing aura makes you feel passionate about something; and that passion leads up to your willing to give up anything, everything, even light itself. Suddenly the world is dark and all that stays is a stench of something sugary, like warm molecules of glucose discovered by forensics in a corpse of a guy who got creamed by a bus; that scent… that stench, is the real addiction. It's not cocaine or alcohol, it's not caffeine or masturbation… it's its presence that gets you hooked, drives you wild, protects you from evil doers and people who just might not understand how you need it to survive. That's the rub after all, isn't it; to survive. Right and wrong fade into each other; two words that share the first letter, phonetically.

We all want to survive, hold on to our addictions and pray to God they won't hurt us eventually; but in the end when nothing matters you'll ask yourself if everything you ever traded off for its might and glorification weren't that much as you expected.

The question of what matters is the reason behind our very existence after all. Survival is way overrated.

Unfortunately, you'd do anything for it… even if anything ain't right.