My Brain On Crack

What Do You Do When You Just Want To Die?

Right now, in this moment, I want to die.

While this isn’t purely hypothetical, please don’t freak out. Don’t refer me to a suicide hotline. Don’t tell me I need counseling. Because baby, I can guarantee you 100 percent that I am not the only person in the Universe who feels this way — at least sometimes. Momentarily. But I am one of a handful who is willing to talk about it.

It wasn’t long ago that I first began really embracing this feeling when it comes up. Emotions, to me, are waves. They come, they go, they move through and around and beyond me. Ripples in a pond. Yeah, I’m an emotional person. I would be the first to offer that. And that glorious aspect of me made people around me uncomfortable as a child, so I learned to push it away. Was I successful? Not so much.

Feeling of helplessness, anger, and hopelessness have always been oddly connected for me. I know it has much to do with a panoply of things like that initial childhood dynamic and other perceptual choices I made. I sort of love the irony in that my work, my love, is about helping other people through similar spaces. Healer, heal thyself, right?

So I offer this.

I don’t think of death as something to fear. Yeah, people would miss me. Yeah, there’d be things I wouldn’t do, lives I wouldn’t touch, if my body was no longer infused with my essence. Do I feel a sense of responsibility about that? Not really. I’m all about letting go of responsibilities that aren’t mine. You over there — you have your own life to live irrespective of mine. Even though I love you unabashedly the way I do.

Death would be a respite. In the space I’m in right now, which is ALL ABOUT hopelessness, letting go of that sounds fantastic. Brilliant. The best idea ever.

So this is what I do when I feel like this.

Nothing.

Nothing special, anyway. I don’t try to get over it, past it, or beyond it. I make a pot of congee. I take a shower. I hunt for new apps for my iPhone. I Twitter and Facebook, feeling the interwoven tapestries of all to whom I am connected. I listen to my love laughing upstairs. I write about whatever comes to mind. I breathe, not in any special way. Just in and out.

That’s it. Nothing changes, not for now, but everything changes. Annica.

One Comment

  • Ron

    Respite? Yeah, at some level. To me, death as respite has always seemed like some external thing, some big “character” that will act for me if I ask. I only have to choose IT, and IT decides everything else in a profound and absolute way. And there’s my respite.

    But I inevitably remember the cool stuff here, like the fabulous trees, purring cats, and instant communication around the planet for anyone! And hot showers! (This is my first time here with hot showers everywhere, and they are so amazing!) Then I also recall that the lines may be long to get back and I think “Fuck it – I’m gonna hang out!”

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