Trigger Warning: This post talks about the ideation of suicide and ponders death, life and living.
Have you ever wanted to die? Felt like it would make things easier for others if you just were not in the world? In their way? Being a burden emotionally if not financially? Have you had a plan that would make it feasible? Known just how to do it and even how to make a profit from your death so that your debts will not roll over to your family and there just might be some left over to make their lives easier? I have.
I bring to you today, a story that is true, maybe you’ve been there. Maybe not, but I figured I would tell it either way.
I almost got into a car accident today. You want to know what I was thinking before the incident. I'd glanced at the clock and thought I am so close to work and I am only five minutes late. I will be able to get there before 8:45.
I was worried about time.
About getting to work on time.
That was my focus.
Had I stared at the clock even a moment longer, I would not be writing this blog post. Instead I looked back to the road. Noticed that the car in front of me was slowing down. I wondered why as from my vantage point I could see nothing that would result in this happening. In accordance I slowed down too. But apparently it wasn’t slow enough as the cars in front me suddenly slammed on the brakes. The car directly in front of me slammed on their brakes and had to swerve onto the grass to avoid hitting the car in front of it. I slammed on my brakes and heard as everything not secured in the car flew onto the floor. I looked into the rear view mirror at the bulky black SUV behind me and hoped that it too had enough time and space to stop and not hit me. At that moment I wasn’t thinking, “Yes this is it!” I wasn’t thinking, "FREAK I am going to be really late for work!” I wasn’t thinking anything, I was just watching.
It wasn’t an out of body experience or anything like that.
I’ve had some of those.
No this was something new and it was just odd. A stutter in time. A misstep if you will. In that aftermath I sat in the driver seat and watched and observed. I observed that the old, dusty, black jeep that had to swerve was right beside the silver SUV in front of it. As if it had pulled alongside it into a hereto unknown parking spot. I observed that we were right before the bridge and if this had happened on the bridge there would be a good chance that he (the driver of the black jeep) would have either hit the car in front of him or gone over the bridge. I observed that I now was right behind the silver sedan in the space originally occupied by the dusty black jeep. I observed that I couldn’t really think and that I felt something that I had not felt before. Something that weighed down my mind preventing me from thinking and caused my stomach to tighten.
In the moment of silence that reigned over the cars we all just kind of sat and looked around us. Realizing just how close to death we had been. Yet when the silver SUV pulled off slowly we all followed and drove like nothing had just happened. Like it was an everyday occurrence. Like our lives had not just been irreparably changed and briefly intertwined.
I am glad I don’t know those people in those vehicles. I am glad they don’t know me. Yet, as I sit here and type I realize that I still can’t quite get over it. I made it to work before 8:45 am. Yet, I felt no real joy or satisfaction in this. I attended the morning meeting and acted in accordance. Yet, I felt as if my stomach would leave my body. I crossed my arms over it to keep it in place. I briefly wondered if I would throw up. I scouted out a trash can just in case.
As I stood there listening I could really care less what others were saying. I took in enough to function. Instead what I focused on was the feeling settling in the pit of my stomach. The odd emptiness in my mind that says something is missing. Like I went to sleep during the day and woke up tomorrow not realizing that I had missed the previous day and go through that next day with the nagging feeling of something being off. It isn't until I finally figure out it is tomorrow not yesterday, that I missed time that the feeling leaves. In that moment, the moment of our almost wreck my mind stopped. Just stopped. I blinked and things were different.
But were they?
With my arms crossed over my stomach I stood there in that meeting and realized I haven’t felt this way in a long time.
I have felt fear.
Yes, indeed I have felt it’s bone numbing fingers lightly stroking the back of my neck. I have felt it’s frosty breath, as it leaned over my shoulder to whisper in my ear that I am not good enough. That I am unworthy and should no longer exist. I have felt it’s warm embrace as it told me to not back down, to stare the man who was once a beacon of strength, trust and love in my life, in the eyes. To not look away even as he lifted a knife to strike me down along with the woman who was the center of my world.
It was that fear that kept me alive that night. It was another type of fear that drove me to seek an end to my life. And yet another fear that held me still hidden behind a parked car as bullets flew around me and my sister.
Yet the fear that now held me fast in its grip was different from all the others. This fear disturbed me for some reason. It reached a part of my mind that even though I have been in situations in which I feared for my life. Where death was but a downward strike, a wayward bullet, or a knotted rope away, this part of my brain..., of my mind remained untouched. Until now.
As I sit here and shiver, I realize that I had not truly feared death. I can remember that when I was younger I thought I could not die. I had a purpose, and death wasn’t even a possibility to me. In the shoot out, I had a job, to protect my sister. During the struggle between the man and woman, it was my job to protect the woman and the children. In the depression I knew that as the protector of my family, I could not do that to them.
Yet in this moment where I had no job. Where it was just me. I felt, truly felt, FEAR.
Fear of dying. Of this being the end of me. Of what made me. Not just the bod, but my mind, my spirit, my soul, my essence, ME. It would be the end. What had I accomplished? Had I done what I said I would? Had I kept my wailed out promise to the world that I gave as a condition of my entry? What do I leave behind?
Death is inevitable. I thought I had already dealt with it. I know intellectually that one day I will die. I don’t know when. I don’t know how. I just know that it is the only constant in this world. You are born and you die. What happens in between is up to you. What happens after…. Up to whatever deity you ascribe to?
I don’t know...
I keep going over this audiobook that I just listened to “The Only Child” by Mi-ae Seo. It’s about death, pain and fear weaponized. I keep thinking of the little girl and how the only person who was kind to her, she still killed. I kept thinking about the ending and how normally when I don’t like an ending, I would change it to what I liked. Following that thread to it's natural end, but here the ending fit. Even though it was sad and hard, the ending fit.
Will that be what my ending will be? Sad and hard to bear, but fitting?
I sometimes wonder who will be at my funeral. I know my immediate family will be there, but will my extended family come? Will they care? Will they treat my mother, brother, sister and step-dad kindly? Will anyone else be there? My coworkers, my friends, people in the past whom I have forgotten? Will it be a spectacle? With those whom I have never met saying “It’s just so sad..” “Did you see the body?” “She had such promise...” “I’m glad she’s gone!”
I don’t know… I really don’t.
I just know that I almost got into a car accident. My mind stopped thinking, and all was quiet, still for the first time I think ever in my life and I just watched and observed and listened.
I know that eventually I will get over it. Just wait until the others in vehicles ahead catch their breath and we each pull slowly away picking up speed a little more cautiously with a little more distance between us and continue on until it will be as if nothing has happened. As if nothing has changed. As if we didn’t almost meet and learn each other's names so intimately it would be as if they were family.
I am glad that they are still strangers to me. I hope life continues that way. However, I think I will take the lesson to heart. We will all die someday. When I do leave this world it won’t be by my hands. I learned that I like living and want to keep doing it until it’s my time. I learned that I could care less about work, about meetings about deadlines. I want to live and I don’t think I have been. I don’t know what the long term ramifications are. I just know that the vessel that contains the essence that is me has been shaken and I don’t want to.. No it’s more than that… I can not just act like nothing has happened. Because something did....
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