I Need to Live

It has been awhile since I last posted, I have been fighting my own demons of depression and pain, sometimes it is so overwhelming I can barely make myself function to do the things I absolutely must and so I took a break for a time. There were other life issues that have kept me away but none that I could not have overcome if this mortal body was not so fallible. Depression and the vertigo of menieres have left me exhausted and struggling to take each step that I must.

You would think after knowing the heartache of losing my own son to suicide that I would never let the thought of my own death at my own hand be a thought that crosses my mind. Unfortunately knowing that the death of a loved causes so much pain does not take away the thought that I want to die more often than I want to live. I try very hard to not give those thoughts a home but they are always there. I want to die, I need to live.

I need to live for those around me who count on me, I keep thinking that the time will come when I am not really needed and I can then check out of mortality without guilt and then something will happen and no matter what I tell myself I can't find a time when there isn't someone who needs me here. I am and have been the primary provider in my household for years. I used to believe that I was worth more to my family through my life insurance and death benefits at social security than I was as a working mother, but we no longer have as much life insurance, my death needs to be accidental for them to get more and my children are getting older and so the amount of social security that would come in would no longer support the needs. I need to live.

I can laugh, I can joke and play around and sometimes I even genuinely enjoy myself but the war inside my own head is always there. I have been to therapy, years worth, and many different types of therapists, I have been on MANY different types of medication, on them, off them, know I do better on them so I make myself keep going to appointments and tweaking and adjusting and on and on. It never goes away it is chronic and is worse in the winter as the daylight hours dwindle. Winter solstice has become a strange kind of goal, if I can just make myself live until then, when the daylight hours start to lengthen again, I can make myself live through till the spring. I need to live.

It is often said suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem and that those who die at their own hand are short sighted, I don't believe that, people with chronic illnesses know that their disease is not a temporary problem. No matter what I do or how much counseling I get my disease is not going to go away. I try to control my thoughts so that they don't become actions but death does not scare me so much as living through the pain I feel in every part of myself. I have found the poem Just for Today from AA to be helpful, the first line is: "Just for today I will try to live through this day only and not tackle all my problems at once. I can do something for twelve hours that would appall me if I felt I had to keep it up for a lifetime." If a day is too much I live through an hour, a minute, a moment. I need to live.

It is interesting that I want there to be some kind of after life for the son I lost and yet for myself I want oblivion. I don't just want to have my mortal body die, I want to cease, I don't want to have an existence of any kind, living as a spirit seems like more punishment. I want my reality, I don't want the christian heaven, I don't want to be reincarnated, I don't want to be  disembodied energy, I especially don't want the heaven that Mormons believe in. I want peace. I need to live.

Two other things keep me from killing myself, number one is that someone has to find me, I know that people never get over that, I have thought how easy it would be to die in the hospital where it would be medical people who found the body and I still hesitate. Someone has to find me and the worst person I know still would not deserve that kind of emotional pain. I have flashbacks of the day Colley died whenever I see magpies clustered together a certain way and I didn't find his body. The second reason is that I would be autopsied and they will not know the difference between scarring from a willing participant and a victim of abuse, there is still shame tied to the sexual abuse I have suffered at the hands of others, if I was absolutely sure there was nothing after this life it would not matter but I am not sure and I don't want anyone to think I invited that abuse. I need to live.

I still want to die, I need to live. Enough for now.