Choice?

I've been depressed since six years of age.  Not just a little sad or moody, full on clinically, deeply, sometimes-I-struggle-to-breathe depressed.  I've been suicidal so many times, I've lost count.  I'm still living because of a promise.  I'm not always happy about that, but my word is sacred to me and I won't be forsworn.

Despite the depression, life is beautiful.  Perhaps more beautiful because of the endless sorrow that dogs me.

Every time I hear of or know a person who takes the final step, I am so deeply saddened.  I wish they'd had the one thing that would have helped them hang on one more time.  I wish I could have sat with them in that timeless moment and shown them...I don't know...whatever they needed to see that they were needed, valued, wanted, here.

I am sometimes envious - they're not here, not dealing with it any more.  They are free in a way I cannot be while on this side of the veil.

I've said it before and I'll say it again and again - suicide isn't about wanting to die.  It's about NOT wanting to continue living this way, and NOT seeing any way out.  It is about escaping a life that seems untenable, irreparable, undesirable. It's about being so steeped in misery that it'll never wash away, we'll never be clean, we'll never shine again.

Want another perspective?  Go read this.

Anyone who goes on about how it's selfish and the person doing it wasn't ill but rather made a choice has (I would argue) NEVER actually been in that moment, inches away from the door and so damned ready to step through they would leap.  Because they'd know it isn't about who's left behind...indeed, the one doing the leaving KNOWS they'll hurt the ones left behind, but they often believe, deeply, to the bone, that the people they're abandoning will be better off without them.  I have always thought so.  Even my kids.  Especially my kids.  They'd miss Mommy for a minute, but then?  They'd have a much better life without me being the albatross around their necks.

If depression is a choice, so is cancer.  They do the same thing, don't they?  Eat away at you until there's nothing left?  Eat away at you until cessation of life seems preferable?  Eventually, they can both be beaten, or at least held in abeyance...and eventually, they can both kill you.

It's okay if you don't understand...I hope you never do...

The Promise, Part Five

Now I get on with life. That's what I decided. Real or not, I gave my word to her, and I always keep my word.

I went home, put the knife away, and kept quiet about my afternoon. Mum wouldn't know until decades later what I'd almost done. Until now, I've never written about it - in part because I didn't feel equal to the task, in part because I know it sounds crazy, and in part because I'm still not sure what happened...and may never be.

I've been there again, on the edge, looking over. I've felt the tug, the insistent pull. The yearning. It's always here, somewhere - maybe a gnat's whisper, maybe Niagara's roar. It's a constant.

Sometimes it's "You're not good enough."

Sometimes it's "Things will never get better."

Sometimes it's "No one loves you or wants you."

Sometimes it's all that and more.

Just because I don't pick up the gun, the pills, the blade, and give in to the want, the need, doesn't mean it isn't there and isn't strong enough. Oh, dear Gods above, sometimes it fair smothers me. Sometimes I wonder that I don't burst into flames, it burns so strong.

Doesn't matter. I promised. Whatever else I may be, I am not an oath breaker. Once given, my word is my bond. I won't be forsworn.

I'll live to the end of my days with it, like a hunger that can never quite be satisfied, but I'll live.

Ultimately, that's all that matters, isn't it?

The Promise, Part Four

Or I could choose otherwise.

I had all of eternity to make up my mind.

I believe that I would still be there now, frozen in that moment, if I hadn't made my choice.

She didn't ask for a promise, really. She didn't say "Swear.." She just waited, sitting cross-legged, back to a tree, face turned up to the sun.

It didn't take long.

I made the biggest promise I've ever made in my life. I promised that I wouldn't try again. That I would not seek out death, but would wait my turn. As much as I wanted it, as much as I hated the life I was living, I wouldn't end it.

As soon as the words were spoken, the world was the world again. Birds flew and twittered, traffic hummed on distant roads. I could move again.

There was no sign of the Lady, nothing to show that she'd ever been there, ever been anything more than a figment of my desperate imagination trying to keep me from what I wanted, a creation of my survival instinct.

It was entirely possible that I had given my word to a tree, to the air, to a fat bee lazily bumbling by with no idea of the import of the moment.

Now what?
~~~~~
Part five HERE.

The Promise, Part Three

"Oh, child."

If ever one could feel two words keenly, cut deep to their core, know the weight of love and sorrow they contain, I did.

"Oh, child."

I could cry today, recalling. Oh, child, indeed. If I lived to the outer limits of human endurance, I would still be a child in her eyes.

I won't write out the whole of our conversation. It doesn't matter. She spoke; I listened with the whole of my being. I spoke; she listened with the whole of existence.

Most important were those first two words..."Oh, child"...and the final part.

The part where she didn't promise me a damn thing but that she was and is and always would be there - there in the trees, in the sunlight, in the wind. The part where she didn't say everything would be alright, fine, hunky-dory, that the bullying would stop, I would have justice, and my spirit would heal and there would be peace...but she'd be with me while I worked it out, while I found my place and my balance. She didn't promise she'd give or do anything - only that she knew I had it in me to give and do.

She didn't tell me I had to. She would let me go, release me to finish what I'd started if it was what I wanted. She never promised that it would get better, only that it could. She would let me go, if I wished, and I could get on with it.

She would let me go. That I would succeed, there was no doubt. We both knew I was going about it the right way, and once begun it could not be undone. And I would be gone, done, finished. I wouldn't hate my body or my self any more, wouldn't feel broken, useless, damaged and scarred.
I could choose that, or...

Or.

Or...
~~~~~
Part four HERE.

The Promise, Part Two

The human mind is a peculiar beast.

It can create reality when it's faced with something it doesn't like. We don't see things that are right in front of us. We see things that aren't there. Given enough stress, enough motivation, we can come right out of reality and into a world of our own making. What's left behind is an illusion, a shell - it may walk, talk, move about just as we would, but no one is home.

This state of removal is temporally elastic - it might last a moment or a lifetime. It may come and go. It may be a one-time thing. You may or may not know that what you're experiencing is your own illusion.

Under that fine old tree, knife between my knees, choice made, I was removed from reality.

If the day had been quiet before, now it was utterly still. If I looked hard enough, I would find birds mid-flight, frozen like a photograph. I could walk the world and find the whole of it like that. I knew this, so I didn't look.

I couldn't move, either. Wrists close enough to the blade to feel that first cold line of contact, I was as still as the moment before the chaos of creation. I felt as though my mind was as sharp as that blade. I could move my head. I was aware that I was not where I had been a moment ago (despite what my eyes told me), but I wasn't afraid.

I was (and still am) claustrophobic and I couldn't move, but I was not afraid.

In the last seven years I had been sexually abused, verbally abused, psychologically tortured, and bullied. I had seen some of the worst that people could do to a child. I had no reason to trust anyone, family or stranger.

I would have had every right to be frightened, but I wasn't.

I was...curious.

The world around me, although still, was the same. Before me, moving between the motes of light suspended in the ladders of sunbeams slanting through the trees, came a woman.

How do I describe her?

How do I describe the face of God? Or Goddess?

How do I put words to the face, the form? How did I put form to the concept of what I felt had to be deity...or close enough as makes no difference?

All in my mind, but as real as the keys I strike to type this telling.

She didn't look perfect, mind. She looked very human. Real enough that I could reach out and touch her, if only my hands would move. The hem of her skirt brushed low-hanging branches and fallen pine needles, and they swayed. She had a careworn face, and warm eyes that in memory have no one color but were the cosmos. Her hair was brown and hung in a braid.

While I remember what I saw down to the last tiny detail, it's pointless to try and describe it all here. Words on a screen can't possibly relate.

She was not beautiful, but she was lovely. Striking. She was every mother that ever was or ever will be. You'd know her if you saw her - she's your mother, too.

She stopped just in front of me, and the look of unutterable sorrow on her face brought tears to my eyes. I would have prostrated myself at her feet and begged forgiveness, if only I could move. I would have done anything to make her smile, this perfect imperfect stranger.

She opened her mouth, and I and the world waited to hear her.
~~~~~
Part three HERE.

The Promise

Here follows the first of several parts of the last tale of the whole "promise" saga (Can you say "awkward sentence? Sure, I knew you could!). I won't promise that this is the end of the subject, but I think it is.

I was young. I was tired. My spirit was worn, ragged, patched, worn again. I was feeling mighty thin on enthusiasm for life.

I'd endured abuse, abandonment, bullying, and being outcast in my short life - more than most people deal with in eighty years. I knew then and I know now that people have suffered far worse (go read Crystal's story and you'll see), and I have never denied that I had a bizarre, wonderful, very privileged upbringing...but I was just done with the mess.

I was sick, sick, sick of it, all of it, and I wanted out.

I didn't want to die, mind you - I just didn't want to keep living the life I knew, and I couldn't see any other way out of it.

I'd always felt like I had no control over my life - I didn't get to say no, to decide anything. I had to do what was demanded of me because that's what kids did.

I wanted to control something.

I was young.

I went into the woods with a knife and a plan.

Ah, plans. The best laid plans, and all that.

I knelt beneath a fine old tree and felt such a calm, such a peace. It was quiet, and I could smell the sunlight on the pine needles, feel the warmth on my skin, hear traffic in the distance sounding like a river flowing by. Above me, a deeply blue sky patched with bright, white clouds. Oh, the quiet was blissful - if I could make the world this peaceful, this free of the constant noise and rush...if I could make my mind quiet like this...

It was a good, sharp knife. Two edges. Sturdy handle. I knelt and held the handle between my knees, blade up. I was going to run my wrists up it in one go, lengthwise - crosswise would only result in shallow cuts and possible damaged tendons, and I wanted something more than a life full of explanations and pity.

Here, we depart reality a little. Only...we don't. You'll see.
~~~~~
Part two HERE.