Monday, September 12, 2011

Crossroads

I received a distressing text from a friend of mine today, a girl with whom I spill my heart but have never met.  It's funny sometimes how we can connect better with people that aren't within physical reach. Perhaps it's the physical boundaries that make things easier to say...we can write our emotions without seeing the judgment on the other's face and without needing to answer the difficult questions that we'd rather shrug off and cast aside.  But the problem is that when the nights are lonely and we sit in the dark, it's the friends that are physically around us that we need. The ones that we don't have.  And yet, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

My point, however, was that she informed me that she wanted to kill herself last night.  Words cannot describe how relieved I am that she was able to text me today; she is the one person who I've come to rely on and the only one I can count on to give me strength when I feel alone, though miles away.  It's times like these when I sit and really think about what my life has become because I can sit in my room in the dark, staring at a razor, telling someone not to do it while fantasizing about my own demise.  I know that I am a hypocrite; we all are.  But I don't think that matters.  The fact is that we all face difficult times at different times, and it's up to us to try to help one another when we need it.  Maybe we just need a little guidance.  And as I told her:  When the days are dark, we just need someone to shine a little light.  Because while those bright days are few and far between, they're the ones we need to remember and the ones that make life worth living.

I myself find myself in a confusing predicament.  So often I think about dying, picturing myself driving into a semi on a highway, eyeing a bottle of sleeping pills, or pondering the outcome of pouring nail polish remover down my throat.  None of those sound particularly appealing, but at the same time, I am a curious being.  But I think of how permanent such an action would be, and I can't decide if it's what I truly want.  I think a part of me still holds onto that small sliver of hope that this isn't all that life is about; it will be different one day.  And so, I stand here on a beaten path at a fork in the road:  one leads to death and the other leads to life; and they both look about the same.  Do I want to die or do I just not want to live?  Or is it the other way around?  

For now, I will just continue on with my life until I figure it out.