Out of all of the types of nihilism, existential nihilism receives the most literal and philosophical attention.

Social, financial, and mental forces working against me cling to the soles of my shoes as I explore the outskirt hallways of the building. A small price to pay for just a couple minutes away from stuffy classrooms, filled with sniffling kids sporting jam-hands prepared for placement on pieces of parchment. So I walk to escape their diseased little, raspberry-covered noses and count how many steps it takes for me to get from the cardboard box doors and the packaging tape windows to the beginning of the airlock. 23.

Not to be confused with your regular, run-of-the-mill nihilism, or the general weight of existentialism sitting on your paper-thin Cascade shoulders, existential nihilism promotes the philosophical theory that life has no intrinsic meaning or value.

It’s a price to pay nonetheless, and as I take a brisk 57, I reach the second sink closest to the door’s smudgy and warped mirror. In 61, I reach paper towel to blot at the sticky red stains drying like plaster against my now shiny Rudolph nose. I run my hands through lukewarm water that never seems to serve as a substitute for home’s precise temperature control—I don’t want to ruin the new pair of jeans I got last week because I paid full price for them.

The individual human, and entire species as a whole, is insignificant. They lack purpose and punishment or reward for their existence. Change without results. Cause without effect. No power, no responsibility.

A lot of times I think about how I would go about committing the perfect crime. But I am not a currency and do not devote my life to being whipped and flipped through the air to decide who is this year’s sixth-grade girls softball captain at the Y. So really if I went to jail for habitual poor planning, I would just spend some number of days with one-ply toilet paper.

There’s no arguing or addressing or accepting, simply mind-numbing denial. An invitation for the hollowness to spread to the top wrinkle on the knuckle of your left pinky finger—to absorb and radiate the fact that nothing means anything and anything means nothing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch my pointer finger faltering its grip on the porcelain rims of the second sink closest to the door. The face in the fudgy sink turns its head left to examine the red splatter on my cheek, but the palm portion of a peculiar handprint, proportioned so noticeably sizeable it makes my mind stop moving for a minute, proceeds to prohibit my view. Perfect, now I’ve been gone for ten minutes.

Pessimism is a key component considering the decline in worldly religious beliefs and the role they play in influencing, motivating, or restraining human actions.

If I push hard enough, the mirror wiggles out little ripples from my hand as I break contact to the other side. I don’t go through though; the weather is nasty over there this time of year. I pivot and head back in a grand total of 143. I make it back to be greeted by what looks like the outline of a door handle if not for the spread globbed on to bend the object’s rules of figure. I sigh and turn it anyway; I probably should have brought an extra piece back in the chance that this would be the case. I take my seat in the glossy green chair and maneuver my legs around the bars to allow them to sit semi-comfortably underneath the varnished wood frame, but I can never quite get the placement right.

I swivel my head to analyze their mashed potatoes faces for some flicker of posthumous. Embalmed in the thick preserves, they still manage to perform their very best tricks and make the trip to the tissue box on the turn-in table near the door in their very best outfits.

Really, I am just quite average.