Dying By Choice

I found myself sobbing this morning for someone I never even met.

I cried for their loss, I cried for their loneliness, I cried for their sadness.

That's the problem with suicide, we never truly understand why we are crying.  It’s not that they lost all will to live, it is the fact that we couldn't help and we did not know how bad it really was. 

I want to believe suicide is for the living.  It is an awakening for us, nothing else really matters when a loved one dies.  However, when that loved one chooses to die, it cripples our soul.  We never truly recover 100%.

My own mother took her life when I was barely three years old.  It has been a pivotal piece within myself, one I do not think I will ever truly reconcile. 

As often as I try to bury this piece of my reality, it always surfaces in the most terrifying of ways.

I did not know how my mother passed until I was eighteen years old.  I'm unsure if the timing was better or more detrimental to my emotional development.

Eighteen is such a fragile age.  At eighteen we are holding on to a hope that we will feel better, once we understand ourselves fully.

Yet, here I am, weeks before my forty sixth birthday and I still can sob for my mother's darkness.  I still yearn for the mother that I never had.

The mother I do not remember.

The hugs I have forgotten.

The memories that will never be.

Death is acceptable when we expect it, when we can understand it. Death is okay when we can explain it.  

What happens when we have no concrete explanations for the why?  

There will always be a void, there will always be a missing link, a piece of guilt that remains within us.

Why was our love not enough? 

Why weren't we enough? 

Why? 

Simply why?

Whenever someone has come to me with an intent or a glimmer of hopelessness to take their own lives, it always brings me to my knees emotionally. 

It makes no difference if the person is good or pure evil, it simply sadens me to the core of my being.

I never want to be the last person that person has spoken to.  It brings me back to such a dark space of unintentional harm.  

Regardless of how strong I am, or how often I rise from the ashes after being burned, I know that the burden I carry is natural and real.

It is okay to feel this. It is okay to be misunderstood sometimes, it is okay to  be alone.  It is never okay to feel abandoned or as if no one cares.

I struggle with abandonment to this day.  It is truly a self-fulfilling prophecy. One I doubt I will ever escape.

I have never felt that hopelessness to give up.  I have never wanted to sleep forever.  

I have visited many dark, unforseen places, however, I do not comprehend a permanent escape.

This is why I cry.

  

I cry for not understanding.

I cry for those unable to feel love 

I cry for their souls.

A will to live is essential.  Regardless of how dark our minds get.  The will to live stems from the belief and the hope that we will feel love once again.

Our time on earth is about feeling all the good and all the bad.

What happens when the bad is all encompassing, the pain is so great that we have no room for the anything else.  No room for love, no room for joy, no room for happiness.  

We create a haven of despair, that despair becomes more than we can manage, it is depliatating on levels no one else could ever comprehend. That is the belief.

I live with emotional pain, and each day I remind myself to take that pain and transform into something that will not hurt those I care for.  When that hurt surfaces, it is to remind me to continue to always maintain HOPE.  

HAPPINESS

OVER 

PAIN =

EMPATHY