Reasons to Die Tomorrow

Or reasons to live today

Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash

I have a good friend right now who is in the middle of a struggle for her life. I have been on the inside of depression trying to breathe but I’ve never been on the outside trying to remind someone who is too tired from swimming that a life jacket even for a minute is well worth it.

Suicide isn’t selfish but there are consequences for those left behind, besides the obvious effect it has on the one who makes the decision. Still its always your decision to make. I have been there and attempted to end my own stay on the planet. It will never be me who judges. But I will say I’m glad I wasn’t successful. Being able to say that took years but I can say it now.

Some days are a struggle. Depression isn’t cured. It’s tamed. You learn to work with and exist within it. The darkness turns more like smoke than night and you have seasons of light. And that is enough to be worth it.

Now to my list of reasons to maybe keep fighting in no particular order. These are going to range from the semi-inspiring to the insanely practical. Not all will apply to everybody. Take what helps you and leave what doesn’t.

Reasons:

Full moons

I love the full moon. It feels calming while the sun always felt kinda hectic or in the case of sunset, beautiful but sad which is not the direction we want to go. But the full moon always felt like a calming presence, a life buoy. Something that was there to witness my suffering and remind me the world could keep going, that I could keep going. A friend when so much of the world felt empty. Even now when I see more of the light and less of the dark in my life, the moon still has a special place for me. I’d miss it.

The things you haven’t done

Everyone has a few things they want to do in life, like graduate college, or legally be able to drink. Sometimes we want the more conventional things like marriage or children. And sometimes our dreams, the ones that really carry us, are more outside the norm. Maybe you want to write a book, become the world champion pepper eater( is that a thing?) or win an award for best spiderman costume. Dreams don’t have to make sense to anyone but you. Heck, you don’t even have to admit them out loud to anyone, although sometimes that does make it harder for people support you in them. But as someone who was in depression, I know that I often considered ending things despite my dreams because I just assumed even if I continued in my life they would never ever happen. Not like life had been kind to me up to that point. Let me just say, you don’t know. You don’t know how life is going to go. Don’t place your biggest bet on the assumption it all goes wrong. Sometimes things go right. Your dreams are worth betting on. And I say that as someone who doesn’t bet and wouldn’t have bet that way if I did.

Dogs/cats/cows

If you have a pet, you have a dependent. Got to have someone to take care of Spot. They will miss you. Also if you don’t have a pet, all the fuzzy creatures of the world are a reason to stick around. I mean most of them are “pettable” right? (Please note this is not advice telling you to go attempt to pet a bear or some mess. I swear my fiancé is going to give me a heart attack by trying to pet something like a moose)

Screw the world

The world wants me dead. If you are poor, not white, not straight, not male, not conventionally healthy, or otherwise don’t meet what has somehow become the collective norm, the world doesn’t particularly care about you either. Now I don’t know about you, but I have never been one to go around bowing down to those jerk faces who think they make the rules. Certainly wouldn’t go out of my way to make things easier for them.

Bad conversations with good people

I hate phone conversations usually but one of my favorite things is when one of my friends gets high and decides to call me. She is just a little different. More open, more affectionate and entirely more likely to rant about random stuff. I usually end a 2 hour talkfest with my face sore from smiling. Did we cover any actual intellectual conversation? Not at all. Will she even remember it? Debatable. But its so worth it. Those conversations that are about nothing with people that are important to you, even if they happen once a year are worth waiting around for.

You can do it tomorrow

Suicide becomes ingrained in those of use who have faced depression all the way to that edge. Even years since I’ve had a serious long spanning attack of the darkness, it still floats through my mind more than I’m sure could ever be considered “normal”. So I guess that is kind of my point, you don’t have to swear it off or even put it away. Just push it down the road. You can always do it tomorrow. It can always be an option in your back pocket for those of us like me who like to feel as if they have a microscopic piece of control in this tornado of the world we live in. But it doesn’t have to be the top choice. It can always be the break glass option. But you don’t have to until you’ve tried everything else right? And I mean everything because nothing else is as drastic so you may as well start making some drastic choices and changes. But its there for you, tomorrow. Life is right now.

The food in the fridge will spoil

It’s bad to waste food. May as well finish all the food in kitchen really.

I can be wrong

Shocking, I know, but it does happen. It happens more than I’d like to own up to really. But I can be wrong. I can misinterpret a conversation and spend weeks upset over something that only happened a certain way in my head. I can reverse numbers and go to the wrong address. I can put coleslaw mix instead of ice cream mix into the ice cream machine and end up spending a few hours cleaning it. I have lied to myself about why I did things and about what I wanted. (These examples are just examples and do not reflect the author’s life….mostly) The point here is that the voices in my head are not infallible. They can be wrong. How I feel about a situation may not accurately describe the situation. Maybe making a giant unchangeable decision that will be the defining one of your life shouldn’t be made entirely on the voice in your head and some feelings. But I can’t make that call, I can be wrong.

Sometimes the world is awesome

The world is weird and strange and gross and odd and wonderful and beautiful. Humans are all of the same and a few more contradictions to boot. I have seen insane kindness and ingenuity and curiosity all happen in places I didn’t expect. I have been moved by things that I had no intention of letting get to me that much. Ever seen a kid taste ice cream for the first time? Or seen cows when they get back on grass after a winter stuck in a barn? Or been the last one on a beach right before a storm breaks? Maybe its the music by a random hustler with a horn in a bus station or a documentary that dared to make you feel something for people that lived thousands of years ago. But the world is sometimes a really amazing place and it can endless surprise you by how it chooses to remind you of that and when. Seems a shame to miss a surprise.

There are endless other countless reasons to live today and die tomorrow or maybe the tomorrow after that or the tomorrow after that. County fairs, sprinklers, fresh bread, naps, your plants would die without you, pretending to be a dragon on the first cold day of the season, your neighbor wouldn’t have anyone to fight with, the way a good stretch feels; you get my point. I hope my list above offers a few. I know it can be hard to find your own moments to live for when you are in the middle of it all.

If you are struggling I urge you to seek help. There is no shame. We are meant to support each other and we muck that up more often than not. But take help when its offered and ask without shame when it isn’t; later you get to be the person who gives help without judgement to someone brave enough to ask or to offer it when they are too lost to ask. We can change the system. The shame is only there because we allow it to be. Take care of each other.

Thanks for reading Y’all