Just Another (True) Tale To Be Told
Once upon a time a very nice lady, in a very nice office asked me a very simple question.
"Have you ever thought about suicide?"
I smiled at her and as sincerely as I could I said, "I'm not that kind of person. I could never do something like that. I mean I've thought about it in so far as I've wondered if I ever could or would, but I always answered no. I'd miss something beautiful or funny or great that might happen tomorrow. I could never even think of such a thing."
(Now, I probably didn't say anything like all that much, (I'm definitely paraphrasing) but I did let her know that I'd never seriously considered such a thing.)
Then, one day, probably close to a year later, I found out something that turned my world on it's ear and I literally thought about it.
I thought about it everyday for probably a week.
I sat in the stairway and cried and thought about it.
I knew how I could do it. (There were plenty of pills. There still are.)
I knew why. Dear Heavens, of course, I knew why. To end this story. Let it end forever. (Or, on the off chance that there might be something true about reincarnation or even an afterlife. At that moment, I'd have rather walked the Circles of Hell than lived my life.)
I screamed at myself about it.
Then I calmed down and thought of all the times I imagined my life was hopeless before and how something had dragged me up out of the depths and kept me from even getting to the desperate point I was at during that moment. Once it had been books, then music. Terribly, both of those things were now connected to the thing that made me want to end this horror that had become my life story.
In the window seat just past the stairwell doorway below where I was sitting there was a book. That book. That book that was so lovely and beautiful and perfect. That book that everybody either absolutely loves or hates. That book that had saved my life so many times, so many years before. Before it was connected to what was tearing my world apart now. Before I knew too much about the man that wrote it and the OTHER people that had been inspired by it.
Just knowing that it was there made me feel a little better. There were other things that existed, that could help me. Things that could pull me up out of the deep pit of despair that my life had suddenly become.
And there are things. There is OTHER music: Adele and Bruno Mars and Pink and so many more to come. Then there are Twitter and this site and Google plus. People that I can be distantly connected to who make me laugh and cry and think and, best of all, HOPE.
So, have I ever contemplated suicide? Yes. I have seriously contemplated it. I have held my own destruction in my hands and I have let it go. Because? There is ALWAYS something beautiful, or funny, or great and it will happen in an hour, or a day or a week and I don't want to miss it. I've missed too much already.
