A Promise

Now in my 30s, I feel that I am given the same lessons over and over again, that test the same parts of me which are not healed. Reminiscent of the problems I had as a child, teenager, and in my 20s, but expressed differently, and responded to differently by my peers at whatever age. Now they are beginning to form a picture; appearing just too familiar. As I slowly ~succeed in various areas of my life over long periods of difficulty [and with lots of luck] the same types of problems rear up again. It is like I have been denying myself some inherent gifts in my human self [joy, freedom in expressing myself, extending myself to others] in order to create perceived sense of safety in myself. I intend to become more aware of these actions and consciously choose to experience these gifts instead of buckling in reaction. I imagine that there are spirits, energies, angels, whatever you'd like to call them, unendingly, reliably, extending these gifts [to all of us] that I am too afraid to accept. In my view, this is a microcosm of samsara. Perhaps, before I can remember, I've also been struggling with these things and this is my chance.

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If I were to commit suicide, there would be no one to congratulate me on the other side of it. No one to greet me in the doorway and share in the achievement after a life of oh-so-woe, pain, tortured isolation and destruction. We wouldn't take a cute walk onto idiomatic greener pastures of friendliness from the narrow, gray back alleys where I would land in my mind. A weird, cinematic heaven of juxtaposition. No, these are the dreams that may be conjured in the night, but not the dreams that occur with a hastily ended life.

I imagine that instead, my suicide would preclude me from the ease and rest of merely existing [in wombtime] between lives, from the one to the next. Before knowing what is up, down; harsh or soothing; only subject to events forming time forming events in a soup of cocreated growth not requiring so much effort on my end. Rather, in the event of taking my own life, I would be shot hurdling from one life into the next with no respite from The Fear that keeps me wrapped; within me, without me.

Arriving, I would Know that what surrounds me is what I have run from for lifetimes. Like a cruel joke, I would be welcomed back in a sea of fluorescent lights, loud noises, pinched, smiling faces each with an aura of worry lines that would surround me like a halo. Pinched faces like hyperbolized kabuki masks would look at one another, rearranging themselves, then on to me. A Fright, no comfort. I should need to escape from the smiling faces. They are not to be trusted. This belief is what holds me hostage through time. The horror that one human can do to another without thinking much of it. The ways we learn to do so.

But the faces aren't pinched in maliciousness. They are not always conspiring. There may be a comfort of understanding offered. Shade my eyes and hold me close. Allow for quiet and keep me warm. Don't make me work from the go.

I will not commit suicide. And I will learn to know the worry lines and understand the pinched smiles. Perhaps as I do, they will sag and not work as hard, and become less of an echo and more of a presence. If I am made to work to keep myself comfortable, then let me remember how to provide such a place for myself and for others. I will try not to run when some one is horrible to me. Or even when I fear that someone could behave horribly. The adventure on the other side of this experiment cannot be known. Scientists may heed the warning that there can be no results. But that is only because science cannot measure love.