The Courageous Act of Accepting the Inexplainable

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Substance Abuse, Mental Health.

I died three times that day. 

The first was when my mother told me she had relapsed; the same drugs she used to go on a year long bender eight years ago. The second was when my husband told me he wanted a divorce. And the third was when I brought the pistol to my temple, and pulled the trigger. 

There's nothing much to dying. There was a moment of blinding pain, then I was ripped from my body. The actual feeling of being ripped from my body was similar to the twists and turns of a rollercoaster. I was pulled every direction at once, then there was pressure, so much pressure, the weight of the ocean atop me. It felt like every fiber of my being was ripped apart, atom by atom, then reformed again. Colors and times and places ripped through me, I felt everything, I was everything, but I was nothing. I was everywhere, but nowhere, all at once. Then it stopped, as quick as it came, and I was left in this darkness, unsure of where to go, or where I am, or if I made a grave mistake. I've been here, in this dark suffocating abyss of nothingness an incomprehensible amount of time. 

When I had first arrived in that darkness, I found that I could not breathe. I was suffocating, but I wasn't. My own mind was playing tricks on me; I was already dead, I could not be more dead. So I continued to choke until I realized I was the only thing that could stop it.

There are many different theories on what happens to us when we die. I was often fond of the theory that we are just consciousnesses floating around with no body, and no thought. I had never been religious, I came from a family of doctors who believed in science and evolution. I figured the energy our body produced would just be sent back into the universe, our consciousness left floating around like particles of dust. I still don't know if I was sorely mistaken. 

I had brought that pistol to my head to find peace, but I only managed to be more trapped and helpless than I ever was. 

I'm often stuck in the thought of where it all went wrong, in my life, in my marriage. What had gone so wrong that I left everything to come here. I was only thirty five when I died, but I had felt like the pain I've endured those years was enough to cover a life time. My husband and I had been married for ten years. We met in college, both majored in biology, I was to be a nurse; he, a doctor. It was perfect, it felt so perfect, we were right for each other. 

Times got tough though, after five years together, with conflicting schedules, we barely spent any time together. I would watch his back on those days, as he dressed for his seventy-two hour shift, wishing he would just say anything. Perhaps, say that he missed me, that he wished we could spend more together. Anything that gave me the reassurance that he felt the same. I would have cut my schedule in half, I would have quit my job, if he had just said the words. I would have done anything for him. He would not say he missed me though, and I would not either. We were both too prideful.

I was taught to work hard, long hours, make the money for retirement, and so I did, even though I had always wanted more. I wanted to be a homemaker, have children, have an acre of land, maybe have some chickens. But it didn't feel right being the only one to want something like that. My husband had only ever wanted to be a doctor, we rarely had time to discuss anything about the future. It felt like I was slipping, holding on to an oiled rope.

 I had seen the strain it put on my parents' marriage, but still, I fell into that same draining cycle with my own partner. It began to feel like we were nothing more than roommates, just seeing each other in passing, sharing the chores, cooking, and cleaning. I could not remember the last time we had shared any intimacy, anything more than a quick kiss during fleeting moments.

Sometimes I wondered if he found love somewhere else. How could he go without even grazing his finger down my leg, how could he go so long without engaging anything? Was he not as deprived as me? Did he not miss me so? Was there someone else he was receiving it from? 

What happened to those days in college when we would spend countless hours together, barely leaving each other's arms? I wanted to scream at his nonchalant attitude, at his inability to engage in more than a moment of eye contact. I wanted to grab him, and hold him in my arms, beg him to love me again. But I didn't, and now I never will.

I'm unable to tell how much time has passed in this darkness, but when the whispers start I'm pulled back into that humanly rhythm again. It feels like weeks have gone by since I've been in this darkness. I feel as if I have ears again, as if the whispers graze past them, tickling the hair above it. I could not block it out, I had no eyes to shut, no sleep to find an escape from them. 

They whispered the words I had always been afraid to admit to myself since I've come here. The real reason I had taken that pistol to my temple. The pistol my father had given me for my twenty-eighth birthday. All he did was smile at my skepticism, shrugged, and said, "What? They're all the rave these days. The Real American Dream."

They whisper the hardest thing to accept since I've come here. Because the reason I had killed myself, was really only my fault. Because my mother telling me she had relapsed on drugs was something I had already known, and I did not care. I didn't work ten years as a nurse to not recognize what cracked out eyes look like. Her change in attitude, her uppity, jerky movements were not hard to detach from her normal sober mannerisms. All I wanted to tell her in that moment was that I wasn't fucking stupid, I had just chosen to ignore it. I did not need another thing on my plate. And it wasn't my husband who told me he wanted a divorce. It had already felt like our marriage was coming to an end for quite some time. That was just another thing I had no interest in. I had already detached myself from it all. They just amplified my need to escape.

A year before I killed myself, I had a dream. I found myself in a similar place like this, but I had my body. I was standing on a floor of onyx, and with every step I took it sent an echo bouncing off every surface of the space. I was in an echo chamber with no walls. When I had turned to survey the space, I had seen something in the great distance. With no other place to turn to, I began my walk to it. As I came to it, the shape of a door appeared. Just a regular brown door with a brass knob, light streaming from the bottom. It was looking into that light that caused a serene feeling to come over me, followed by a sorrowful one. Whatever was on the other side of the door needed help. The light told me itself without ever speaking, it made me feel things without us ever touching. As I reached for the shiny brass doorknob, I was ripped away, and awoken in bed.

The dream awoke something in me, something that told me there was something I had needed to do, but it was from a world far beyond the one I reside in. There was something, someone, somewhere out there that needed me. All other problems fell away, replaced by the need to chase that feeling. I tried to be a better person from then on, I quit my job and began volunteering, I filled my schedule up with the most selfless acts I could think of. But nothing could fill up that hole, nothing could disguise the need to find it. Somewhere, far out there, I was needed for something far greater.

In the dark abyss, the voice whispering has grown from one to hundreds, all whispering the same thing, "we need you."

And that was the reason I had come, and it was almost unbearable to accept. I had made the choice to leave, because I knew there was something else, something greater that commanded my attention. Something beyond my husband, my job, my parents, something beyond my need to make amends for my last years. Because all those nights after that dream, when I would sit on the rooftop of our apartment, the stars whispered to me, called my name, and told me, "The universe needs you to fight."

My life could no longer be one mundane, agonizing reach for love, life, and prosperity. I had a reason to fight, something beyond human desires. Though, I didn't know what I was fighting or who, I knew I needed to reach for the light. The light would show me. And when I had seen that same light, felt that same feeling I had in that dream a year ago, glinting off the side of the pistol, I knew I had made the right choice, even if I was scared to face it.

I had always known where to go. The human consciousness is stronger than we have ever given it credit for. I was afraid, so I denied myself. I denied myself the respect I deserved for my choice. I wanted to believe it was not my choice to be trapped in my own mind. I began to believe that I still cared about my husband, or my parents. The truth is that I had stopped caring about anything beyond the stars. I had begun to look at them, wondering what they held for me.

When I had pulled that trigger though, and found myself back in the place of my dreams, I had grown scared. I was scared to charge forward, I was scared of the thing I had been anticipating for the last year. I was scared of what could happen next. I was sent back reeling through my life, memories crashing through my mind. When that gun went off, I was human again, and I was back to thinking about others, and what it might mean for them that I killed myself. It was so powerful, so painful, so humanizing, and I couldn't shake it. But there was no where for me to go now, I had done it. I had spent a year going back and forth with myself, and I had done it, I was here now.

The whispers have become so agonizingly loud, so I make my decision. Sometimes the most beneficial thing for us is when we no longer have a choice. My earthly body may be dead, but I am still very much alive. I have been granted this opportunity, and it was time for me to accept it.

I'm solidified, I'm breathing, my lungs reformed, and it feels good. I'm flesh, with arms, and legs, and eyes with eyelids to blink. I will not shut my eyes, I will not try to sleep away the fear and uncertainty. I am human, I am whole again, and that same brown door is in front of me. This is not a dream I will wake up from. It is time for me to answer the universe's cries. It is time for me to accept this task, it is time for me to fight.

The doorknob is cold under my fingers. My wedding band still sits on my ring finger, like a cold, humorless beacon of my past. And somehow, within that, I find strength. Because even though I have left them, and any potential for our future, I know that I am fighting for theirs. And when I turn that knob, I am stronger than I have ever been, because I have hope.