Suicide - Please understand

A Story by Blah13lah

Suicide - Please understand:

I felt as though my entire life had been swallowed by sorrow, guilt, depression, loneliness. It was as though I was being punished for crimes I'd committed in an earlier life. Or as though I was suffering so that others wouldn't have to. That was the kind of irrationality I was experiencing.

One day, I was walking to school, and in the midst of my dejection I saw some tulips. Purple, yellow, red, white. And I thought of how pretty they were. And of how, simply by thinking that thought, I had done something that hadn't hurt anyone. And I had the epiphany that I could fill myself with things that I liked that didn't hurt anyone. Sunsets. The feel of a breeze on my face. And in that moment, my life changed. Like the ancient mariner, it was as though whatever curse under which I'd been living my entire life was broken.

Around that time, a woman came up to me in the school library and introduced herself to me. It took me more than a year to speak to her again. But when I did, we began dating. We've been together ever since. You want to know why it would be bad to commit suicide? Because no matter how hard you tried, if you loved life and wanted to live forever, you would fail. Because no matter what, you will die one day. Because once you die you will be dead forever. And because no matter how much you think you know, you don't know what will happen before then.

If I had died back then, and seriously I'd considered it, I would have missed the overwhelming joy that even now brings tears to my eyes at the memory of when I first heard my son's heartbeat. I would have missed his hugging me and telling me he loved me. I would've missed every day getting to be his dad.

I would've missed blogger. I would've missed computers, which I love. I would've missed getting game-winning hits in softball. I would've missed comic books and good computer games and the occasional good movie. I would've missed being able to help people on my job.

I could not have imagined this life.

See, there are all these things you can experience before you die, in the very few years you have left. So if you're going to die, anyway, and there's nothing you can do about it, you might as well stick around to see what changes.

You can get a job. A menial job, sure. But I've had those. They don't kill you. You can find a place to live temporarily. Shelters aren't the best, but they're a start. I've lived in worse. Food pantries can offer you food.

And once you've stabilized your life, friends will come. Volunteer, go back to school, once you start working. Take things one step at a time and stop misleading yourself that the past is a mirror of the future.

All these difficulties don't have to last.

Proof they don't have to last. Proof that life can change in an instant. But you have to be around to see it.

You'll be dead a long time, so you might as well stick around a while to see what happens.