I’ve promised myself to write today – and it’s not been an easy thing to accomplish. My days, these days, are filled with grandchildren and children and mundane worries about laundry and homework and bedtimes. Mostly.
Still, nothing takes out of my head the worries that I have about other things that aren’t so trivial. Things like, “What does being ‘in love’ really mean? What will I feel like at the exact moment of my death and, come to think of it, how will I die, anyway? What would the lives of my children look like if I’d had the proper resources to devote to their educations, and what if I’d never met and married an abuser? Why did I get my parents, and why was I born where I was in North Georgia, and not in Africa as some starving infant? Why don’t human beings put more value on, and show more respect to, things that are alive?â€
In the mind of The Deneen, there is always a litany of questions and a mountain of analysis going on. I just can’t seem to shut the damn thing off. I try, very hard, to be in that “state of being†where I’m just in the moment. That creates problems for me, though, when I can’t see time as that linear. I’m not sure if that’s a manifestation of my DID, or if it’s just that some of us are more aware of the fakeness of time. The ludicrousness of it. I just have to ask myself what it all means and what it all is for. What is all this living? What are all of these moments? What are they even FOR?
Some of you are probably saying right now that being in the moment, one is not aware of linear time anyway, so there shouldn’t be a conflict where this is concerned, but I’m not so sure about that. I’m not sure that we can ever just totally leave any moment. It seems far more likely to me that we are pulling in all of our moments to us, so that we are everything that we ever are and could have been and are going to be, all at the same time. That’s a LOT of beingness, and I’m just not sure that more of “being†is really what I want and need right now.
A couple of months ago, I decided, once again, that I’d had enough of this “beingâ€. Once again, I faced a time when I no longer wanted to be alive. Sometimes, when I’m feeling like this, I can talk myself out of it. I can remind myself how futile death is because of how futile life is. I remind myself that I am but a strand in the great web of the Universe – but that every strand is there to hold others together, and integral to the intricate design and execution of the whole. I think of the faces of my children and my grandchildren, and think of the legacy that I would leave them if they had to say, “My mother/grandmother committed suicide.â€Â I think of Denise. I mentally bring up the pictures of the people filing past her coffin. I replay the voices, full of pain, of those who talked to me about how horrible it was that she had taken her own life, how she hadn’t understood how loved she was and the emptiness that she was creating in the hearts of those she was leaving behind.
The truth is, and this is something that people who’ve never been that low don’t ever seem to understand, that when you’re feeling so worthless, helpless and hopeless, it’s hard to imagine or believe that your life, or death, has ANY impact on the world as a whole, much less individual people in it. This popular idea that is today being put forth that suicide is selfish is misguided. One can get into a state where one has no real sense of self. One only has the sense of PAIN. Pain, sometimes, that one feels one’s existence brings upon others. Even saying this, I realize that to think that one can cause pain to another does represent ego, and that does represent a sense of self – but what I’m trying to get across here is that the person who is wanting to die is not wanting to die in order to get back at or torture anyone else. They simply want the torture to stop for themselves. They want the pain, the dysfunction that their life has become to come to a close. A stop. They don’t want to go to heaven. They don’t want to go to a better place. They don’t even want to rest. They simply want to NOT BE!
Trouble is, after One has “beenâ€, and since time IS artificial and everything that ever has existed exists infinitely, there is no UNBEING. There is NO escape. Not even in death.
I think this is the one that gets me. That’s the one that keeps me here. Death? It’s like drawing with a yellow highlighter on bright yellow paper. You’ve not accomplished a damn thing. It’s still just yellow.
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I am so doped up on pain meds at the moment, bedtime for me. However, I needed to say that you matter to me and I love you. Whatever the reason, I am so blessed to have you in my life, on my path, as my friend. I see things so differently now, in ways I KNOW I would never have been shown otherwise, had it not been for you. Thank you!
Deneen, I get you on this one, right down to the last word. You’re right — suicide isn’t about the person being selfish toward those they leave behind, but rather it’s the intense pain they feel inside that they want to relieve themselves of. The helplessness and hopelessness are absolute and all-consuming, feelings of self-worth are nonexistent, and any thoughts of how their death could affect others simply don’t register in their minds. A suicidal person sees the world with tunnel vision, and unless something or someone is right in their face they don’t acknowledge it even exists.
I for one am very glad you chose not to act on your feelings and end your life. My life would be so much less of an adventure without you in it! Who else would I know who’d even think of calling me while on the road halfway across the country in the middle of the night to ask for directions?
Love you!
Stevie – Thanks so much for your kind and loving words! It’s good to know that this writing thing that I do helps other people. It’s really about wrestling with my own demons, but I had hoped that sharing that process would be of some use to others. I love you too, and we are BOTH lucky women to be considered friends in the lives of one another! Thanks for reading.
Mike – I am also glad that I did not end my life. That’s why I see hospitals as little havens of safety. When many parts of me are wanting to die, and I know I can’t be trusted, I will HAPPILY turn myself over to someone else until I CAN be trusted again.
I hope that others out there can learn that they are not alone, and that they, too, when faced with those overtaking feelings of wanting to die, will make the choice to go and get help from the lovely people who are out there to help them. Sometimes, that just means phoning a friend for gentle validation of self, instead of admitting oneself to a hospital. You’ve been on the phone with me a couple of times for that very thing, too – not just when I’ve been lost in the in the middle of the night, halfway across the country!
Thanks for being there, Mike and, I love you, too!
Been there myself, Deneen. I thought even my children would be better off without me. But thanks be to God, I am still here. Thank you for sharing your emotions, your thoughts and your insight into that dark, evil place of despair. I say evil because nothing good ever comes from that lonely, self-loathing pit.
I firmly believe there is a reason God has allowed us to escape that torturous pit, if only temporarily. And I think you are beginning to realize His reason and His expectation of you. Keep up the good work.
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