I often have insomnia. I open my eyes in the shadows. But these shadows are like a different kind of clarity, a negative light. It is in this black light that the revelation of 'disaster', of 'catastrophe', of the 'irremediable', of 'absolute failure' comes to me, with the undeniable evidence of fact. Everything seems lost to me.

[...] I have been tortured, and still am, both by the fear of death, the horror of emptiness, and by the ardent, impatient, pressing desire to live. Why does one want to live, what does 'living' mean? I have waited to live. When one wants to live, it is no longer a sense of wonder that one is seeking but in its stead, since only childhood or a simple and superior lucidity can attain it, what one seeks is to be sated. One never is; one cannot be. Material things are not life. One can't manage to live. This 'will to life' means nothing.

I had sought a false path to salvation, I gave myself bad directions.

Ionesco, Present Past, Past Present: A Personal Memoir