Wednesday, April 20, 2011

The Big Give Up

We all go through seasons in our lives. Things seem to happen in groupings for whatever reason, and as such I can't help but feel like I'm sitting in limbo waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don't intend to go into any details. Even if I knew more, they wouldn't be my stories to share... But recently our home has been affected by the news of two separate, unrelated suicides. That much I need to get off my chest. At some level I feel I need to share this in a public forum in order to process what's been going on in my head.

I've always been what I can only describe as deeply affected. I feel things very intensely and have a hard time processing input without indulging in my own strong emotional reactions. I tend to wallow if left to my own devices. To that end I can begin to understand what these individuals may have been feeling during the period of time that built up to their final decision. On the other end of the spectrum I find myself with the opposite of empathy. I just cannot fathom making such a decision knowing full well how many people would be left behind... feeling the way I am right now. And worse. Because in all reality these were people I didn't know extremely well. Which also leaves me wondering how I would handle it if it had been one of my closest loved ones.

Could I handle it?

Ultimately the answer to that question is that I have an underlaying faith in my ability to make it through. I know as I sit here typing away at my computer that there is the possibility that I may someday take another downward spiral in my life, it's happened once, I'm not naive enough to think it couldn't ever again. I also know without a shadow of a doubt that I would be able to make it through the other side again, just as I did the time before. None of this is to say that I am stronger, or even that I am strong enough. It is all to say that no matter how bad things get I know that I have sources of power outside of myself capable of pulling me through and I have faith in those interventions which I personally feel are divine.

I simply cannot imagine not having that feeling of faith, the access to a power that is not my own which I can rest on. Above all else, that is what disheartens me most about this terrible news. Knowing that those individuals didn't have hope, they must have felt like everything rested on their own abilities and  how crushing that feeling must have been if ever their own competency came into question. Looking at it from that perspective I understand completely how it could have been possible in an instant to let it all go.... and all I want to do is hug them and transfer to them the feeling of strength and comfort I have been blessed with. But I cannot, because they are no longer here.

And that hurts.

I have no other words to explain what is going on within me. My heart hurts. Plain and simple.








3 comments:

  1. I really understand the many things that would make someone want to take their life, but I'll never understand the things that makes people actually go through with it.

    I love my friend very much, I wish there was more I could do, or did do. Hope is for sure the key factor it seems. I know he didn't have it now. I wish he knew the love I know.

    Let us spread hope. And love... Just hope and love.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Twin - I love you too!

    Jason - I agree. It is all that we can do.

    ReplyDelete

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