05. A time you thought about ending your own life.
I've sat wondering how to go about writing this for quite some time now.
I keep staring at the cursor taunting me, typing a word or two and then erasing them.
I keep thinking of those I know who have taken their own life or have tried, some on multiple occasions.
My heart aches for them in those final moments, the suffocating loneliness, the terror, the end.
I want to scream at them, to shake them, to tell them they matter, that life is worth LIVING.
Then I put myself there, with them, in their shoes.
Hands shaking.
Irrational thoughts racing.
Hope lost.
Heart beating, but only for a moment more.
And then in a rush; darkness, forever.
There have certainly been moments in my 21 years where I have felt like life cannot possibly get any worse. Moments of inadequacy, of defeat, of loss and of hopelessness. Have I ever held a gun to my own head? No. Have I thought about it in my lowest nasty moments? A gun? No, guns scare me. Wishing for the end? Yes. And truthfully, I think if being brutally honest with ourselves, most of us have. Is it hard to admit this? Yes. It's even harder to type it and put it out there for all of you to read.
Life sucks sometimes and emotions are overwhelming.
Who doesn't hate that raw feeling of hurt? That moment when your heart is already breaking, you are already losing and life looks at you, laughs and kicks dirt in your face.
After a horrendous ending to my freshman year of college, I found myself living on my own in a pathetic excuse of a studio apartment. It was in the ghetto, in the backyard of someone else's house. I had enough room for a bed, a desk and a small two drawer dresser. My closet was in my kitchen; my fridge, always empty. I lived with a cat, who loved me more than quite possibly any boy ever has. Just so you know if hell is on earth, it has mint green walls and a cold concrete floor. I was working myself into the ground just to keep my head above water. I lived in khakis, pastels and an ugly brown work apron. I drove a 73' Mercedes, with a blue leather interior that smelled like crayons, had gold rims, chipping paint and an unreliable transmission. I was alone. Every single day was the same. Every single day, I was alone. With the exception of the occasional visit from my dad or a night at my aunts, I never had company. I was physically sick and instead of taking care of myself, I ignored it, pretending that it might go away if I didn't give it the time. I laid in bed at night crying, screaming, praying. Waiting for something, waiting for anything, but most days the sun came up and went down again and nothing changed. I was a robot, going through the motions of life, but not living. It's the lowest and closest to death I've ever been, I was defeated and far from myself. I went on suffering this way for months and then my life really hit a wall or fell off a cliff, I'm still not really sure which.
I lost my job, my kidneys were failing, I heard the word "hysterectomy" come out of the doctor's mouth for the first time, I was so far from being in school that I never thought I'd go back, I had to move home, I had to leave my best friend, I had to leave my cat, my granpa was dying, I couldn't sleep, I got pneumonia, I was taking 7 pills a day, my granpa died, my dog died; I was being forced to say goodbye to a thousand things I wasn't ready to say goodbye too. And all I could think in my head was, Why me?! What the fuck did I do to deserve this?!
Nothing.
I did nothing. Life happens to everyone, it's not about who deserves it. It just happens. It just is.
Sometimes it's hard. There are moments, days and weeks that feel like they'll never end. I lost so much. I was so raw with emotion and anger I never thought I'd be the same. Then one bitter night a quiet thought slipped into my mind, you have a choice. "Fuck off," I thought as I laid there in bed with my grief wrapped around me like a blanket, not willing to believe that any choice could make my life any better.
In reality life carries on even when you are bitter, even when you don't think it's possible to live another moment, life keeps moving with or without you. But me? I sat in my misery, I threw the world's biggest pity party, dug my feet into the ground and blatantly refused to do anything. No one and nothing could fix my life. No one could bring back my dead granpa, no one could comfort the gaping hole in my heart, no one could tell me it was going to be okay. What the hell did they know anyway? They hadn't lived my pathetic life, they hadn't been hurt like me, they weren't 20 years old with cancer that was going to take away the possibility of children!! They didn't know anything and they certainly couldn't make it right. No one could.
Except for me.
I don't know when it happened. Maybe it was when my results finally came back to reveal I was cancer free. Maybe it was when I watched a hundred people gather to celebrate the man my granpa was and I realized what an honor it was to be his grand-daughter. Maybe it was sitting on my grandparents couch listening to my brothers belt old Johnny Cash songs and laughing for the first time in what felt like years. Maybe it was having a dream that offered me comfort. Maybe it was holding his guitar close to my chest. Or maybe it was none of these things. Maybe it was me, standing up on my own and making the decision to move on, to make my life better. Whatever the moment was, I finally had it. Somewhere lost in a world of pain and grief I remembered the girl I used to be and I dug through everything to bring her back to me. To pull her close and comfort her in a way no one else could. To tell her the story of a girl who once believed with all of her heart that she could live in a castle made of sunflowers and opalescent windows. I wrapped my arms around her and promised to never let go again. And as I finally let myself cry, for her and for everything that had been, the sun came out and my heart, my soul and my world were once again filled with the hope of the little girl I had lost somewhere along this long, hard, ugly road they call life.
One of the last conversations my granma and granpa had before he died went like this,
"I didn't know dying would be so hard," he said.
And she replied, "Walt, living is hard."
---
You see, both are hard. There are moments when both seem impossible, unbearable, and painful. Both are messy, sometimes unmanageable and definitely unexpected. But my granpa would tell you, as he told me in a letter he wrote to me my senior year, "Kelcer, you have to take time to stop and enjoy your life, don't waste it, cause' you're gonna be old like me before you know it. Just remember to smell the roses and breathe."
I trust my granpa, perhaps more than I trust myself, so if nothing else I'll do the least of what he told me and remember to breathe. At any given moment, you have the power to say, this is NOT how the story is going to end.
Even when you have nothing, you have a choice,
K&M
