He felt confined and suffocated, not just by his current predicaments, but by existence in general. Afterall survival was little more than a myriad, constant struggle to not get screwed. He failed to see the point of it all, but couldn’t find an alternative. As a result he felt condemned to suffer as a prisoner of life.

One day, it finally occurred to him that his prison had no bars.

With that came an ocean of fear and guilt, threatening to consume him. Survival wasn’t obligatory, just that it was hardcoded into our brain and reinforced by social conditioning. Maybe it was perfectly fine to choose not to live. Would it be the cowardly way out? Was there a difference between loosing the will to live and using death as an escape from one’s inadequacies? He was not a quitter, of that he was sure, almost. Still, with every passing day he found it harder to persevere and even harder to accept the diabolical alternative that ravaged his fantasies. And then in an agonizing moment of complete surrender; he conceded. Regardless of everything, everybody, he really, surely, wanted to die. When? Well...Not yet, there was plenty of time.

And thus it came to pass that Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.