And read an uplifting section from the rapper’s final day in jail.

Lil Wayne has shared new excerpts from Gone ‘Til November: A Journal of Rikers Island, his recently released memoir about serving an eight month prison sentence in 2010. Titled “Harshness” and “Last Day,” they capture very different memories and emotional states during the rapper’s term.

The first finds Wayne at his most depressed, recognizing “I’ve never been this close to suicide before,” before thinking back to watching an inmate attempt to hang himself after his requests for water were continually being ignored.

“Because I was in jail, I was like, damn, that nigga is crazy … Oh well, what are we eating tonight? Jail desensitizes a lot of things,” he writes. “The reality in here is so harsh. I will never understand how anyone could think that this shit is cool.”

The entry ends with Wayne feeling lifted up after receiving a call from his kids, a positivity that carries into the second excerpt, Wayne’s entry on his final day in prison. It’s a period he describes as filled with creativity and excitement, reflected in his anecdote about one of his last times in the prison yard:

“A butterfly landed on me when I went to the yard the other day. For whatever reason, I felt connected to it and got lost in the beauty of seeing a butterfly in hell able to fly away.”

Read both entries in full via Rolling Stone.