99 Red Balloons, 99 Bottles of Beer on the wall, 99 Problems, 99 Metaphors… but why did you have to go and try and kill yourself?

A dear friend, and coincidentally family member decided that life was too much, and tried to end his suffering.

My head took over, when my heart checked out at the news. My head is very logical, clinical, and was seeking to restore balance and harmony into my body and energy. Balance was clearly broken. This was a frustration. My head decided that it was easiest to be Angry.

Yes, Anger would work. When all else fails, and the heart is hurt, lash out and be angry. Anger is something my mind can understand, hurt is not.

My mind started tearing through my personal history for times when I have been angry. How did we process this in the past…. Surprisingly, there aren’t many. This is not to say I don’t get annoyed, mad, or agitated – this happens, and more frequent then I’d like or hope to experience — but Anger, bordered on Rage – this is not a response I am very well equipped to accomodate.

From my emotional growth and enlightenment exercises, I recognize that anger is one of the more toxic emotional states one can have, it literally poisons the organs of the body. The body is not designed to sustain this emotion, and has no defense to contain it, it must allow the anger to run rampant through the body raging_against_the_machine — as it were.

So, my mind and my heart decided I needed to have a pow-wow – after a day of coping through anger, I was exhausted, and realized that this would NOT be something I’d be able to prevent doing critical damage to myself to hold onto.

I did some self therapy and drank myself into release. While I’ll acknowledge that this is not a particularly constructive method for dealing with anger – it was perhaps less destructive then my initial idea to hire someone to let me beat the crap out of them — considering I don’t really know how to do this, it would likely have been more injurious to me then to them – not to mention the all sorts of red flags from a sensible rational human perspective about the wrongness of intentionally hurting another. So I drank – it was good beer — I’ve sort of developed a taste for IPA lately. It took a little more than I would have liked – 5 beers over about 2 hours. But I was finally uninhibited enough for my brain to shut off the anger and for my heart to cry out in anguish.

How could someone do this to me? How could they change all of my world, by trying to intentionally change the course of destiny? How could they be so cruel, so heartless, so selfish? From my perspective, suicide is one of the most selfish things one can accomplish. Choosing to try and shift the plans of this lifeline, to force them to artificially conform to some alternative, for the sake of a temporary relief to the self imagined feeling of helplessness is just — selfish.

No person is an island, every other person has an impact on every other person in this life. The kind thought, the kind word, the smile, the hug, the touch – all of these things have an impact. Trying to remove yourself from the playing field because of lacking the skills to deal is just not the best option. There is always help, there is always hope. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like it, I too have and share despair, hopelessness, pain. In those times of darkness, I remember that there is always light. Darkness can not exist without light. I find comfort and solace in remembering that the darkness is just the shadow of my present circumstances, both my choices and the conditions beyond my control temporarily blocking the light, and I have the power to make different choices to let the light shine brighter. To change my circumstances for the better.

I had talked to this person about suicide in the past, we had talked through about these feelings and reaching out for a lifeline, a support, a friend – I had reached out to this person, and offered to always be an ear, always offer a word of encouragement, a kick in the ass, or a general shoulder to cry upon. It was my deepest belief that this person knew they were cherished, loved, admired, and respected. Clearly this was not the case.

While I do not take responsibility for the choices this person made, it is very hard for me to reconcile the hurt and broken trust I feel. While I have walked through the anger, and have embraced the hurt, I still feel betrayed. I feel like my words and love were not only not accepted, they were not welcome. That this person could not reach out to me in their darkest moments, to ask for my help – hurts.

There are not many people that I would allow to hurt me this way, while I generally love most all of humanity and while I would generally be a willing listener to most people in dire straights, there are not many that I make this true and realistic offer unconditionally. I do not walk in front of the moving truck for mostpeople – while I would try and wave, scream or move them out of the way, or get the truck to stop – I would not walk in front of the truck for most people. This person is one of the ones I would consider to be amongst the few I would — would have…. Right now I don’t know.

I feel lost. I feel dazed and confused. It feels like I’m in this desert of sand and just looking for that drop of rain. How do I trust this person again to not hurt me? I’ve read the statistics, the likelihood is that he will try again, and trying again ultimately he will be successful. This is the numbers speaking. I know from a spiritual perspective, that it doesn’t matter one way or the other, if he made this commitment before he joined into this body in this lifeline, that it will happen. I do not have control over this, its not that I ever did, but I thought this was not a concern – and now it is a concern.

How can I value someones life higher than they value it themselves? How could I have been so stupid to value his life when he did not?

I just don’t understand. My heart is making all sorts of excuses for him. Well he was in pain, well he was hurt, well he had a bad day, well he was in a bad place, well he felt the loss and the grief and had no support — but it always comes back to that, no support – and that is a lie. He had support, he pushed it away … why did he push it away?

That expression “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink” — all the water in the world won’t help a thirsty man if he refuses to take the cup and drink the water…..

We only have each other for support in this life. We can only take what we each say and believe it or disregard it – I offered him support, and he didn’t take it. I offered him advice, suggestions, recommendations…

I keep going through the motions, go to work, play games, play with dog, clean the house, sleep, shower, shit, shave – but its not helping the hurt be any less, and its not helping the others who were hurt.

They seemed to have a plan, I went with it – they had some idea of a solution or a fix. …. Maybe it will help.

More prayer, more rest, more being good to myself. Time, more time.