Keep Thinking of Suicide

It has been about a year since I have posted. (Whoa, no, I checked. It has been two years.) My parents died -- the only ones I ever had:  one allowed me to be horribly abused, and the other inflicted the torture. Then, a year after their death, I have been working full-time (amazingly) and have not had time to write. I am currently, finally, unemployed and doing a lot of reflecting. My work contract ended. I was very glad -- both that I was able to fulfill it and that it was over.

I am mentally to the point that I can function in the world--society--and hold down a job. I suppose this is a good thing--though, I push myself to do it. I have considered that it might be an alter--a compartmental part of myself--that can function highly that has emerged.

I say this because when I had a week off of work I rested. Then, when I had to return to work I began to freak out, becoming very suicidal in thought. I so badly did not want to return. However, I literally forced myself to do it. Somehow, I pushed inside and found a part of me that was able to get myself out of bed, dressed, and to my job.

It was only recently on my last few days that one of my co-workers told me that months earlier she thought I was upset with her because I no longer said, “Good Morning.” I confessed that I was struggling to return to work, and in an unfortunate vulnerable moment told her I was struggling with suicide because I so badly did not want to come back. I don’t think she ever thought of me the same. She was looking forward to the day I left.

One day at lunch I overheard her in conversation say proudly that no one in her family was mentally ill. She was not like “those" people.

And there on a vulnerable day, just two or three days before my contract was over, I exposed my frailty -- I was. I came from a long line of the mentally ill.

Now again reflecting, I was only hoping by God’s grace to save my own children from this curse, the abusing cycle. They suffer from depression and other bodily auto-immune frailties but do not have the horrendous abusive background that I broke away from. I did not raise them perfectly. I hurt them some as they witnessed my own horrible struggle to recover and fight to survive. This has scarred them but not devastated their soul, or their capacity to be whole.

Now--as I see how life turned out-- I believe it would have been better if I had never married or had children.

I was so full of promise. I was so determined I would do better, that life would be so different away from the abuse. I had no way to know it at 19. I didn’t understand the depth of damage 18 years of continuous abuse would have on my mental stability or my capacity to function as a parent.

I had no way to foretell that my marriage would not be a joyful companionship, a soulmate. (Is that even reality? At 50+, I confess I still do not know.) I have been married 32 years, almost 33. My husband is a kind, yet stubborn man. He has never inflicted physical or verbal harm on me. He does not drink, or do drugs. Sports and music are his vices. He crushes me though, and does not seem to be connected enough to know or care. He does not want to get that deeply involved in me. He loves me in his own way, his own level, but we are not soulmates as I had hoped to have been. He does not possess the capacity to desire this level of knowing another. He does not want to adventure into that depth or journey.

Thankfully, I know God. He connects to me in the deepest places of my soul as no human ever has, and as it seems, I am at least halfway through life, God is the only one who will know me or ever care to know me in this way.

I must die to this desire to know a human in this way. It will not be part of my life here on earth. There comes a time that as we age we must adjust and realize that some of the things we hoped for will never be.

Still, I confess, I had one or two souls in life that were much older than me that I did connect with in my soul when I was in my teens. Both had love interests in one another and I think they were tripping on drugs but somehow when our eyes met I could read their minds and they read mine -- or so I thought. As our eyes locked I thought they knew my soul and I knew theirs, not in a sexual way but in a soulish one, to me a much higher plane. The older one I have no clue what happened to him, the one maybe 10 years younger but still quite older than me ended up marrying a girl who was three years older than I that attended my high school. We have been in touch once or twice but it has never been the same. Like so much in life, we were simply biding time and ended up being passing ships.

At this point, I find myself dying, and maybe this is why I ponder why I am alive.

Why am I alive?

When we are young we think it is for love, and possibly, the hope of raising a loving family. For me, coming from a hideously abusive one, I KNEW I would do so much better. Yet, after this has happened in real life, when this is complete--as I am in the stage of my children moving on and not really being connected to me--I am not needed by them. I am alone. Alone in the sense of not being close or wanted, discarded. But that would mean I was one held and I am not sure I ever was. I was a necessity to their survival because they were young and dependent, not a mother adored, a mother loved.

I so desperately wanted my children to have a bond with me, a special loving closeness.

A bond that I never came close to with my parents because of the torturous abuse.

And yet, while I did my very best, I served them and raised them and tried to provide as much time as I was able to show them love and to be with them.... they never were close to me.

They never celebrated my birthday or Mother’s day, and unless prompted by obligation, they never will. (I confess I do blame my husband for not aiding them in their youngest years in knowing how special it was to honor me. It was frequently just another day. I was ignored and they were too young to know any better.) Yet, now, even as they know better, they don’t make much of an effort, if any at all.

Functioning in the Workplace

And my husband now wants me to work. He hopes I will for the next fifteen years. He counts on the money, though we have enough to retire. He has dreams of writing music when he retires and his studio wants to drive his push for me to be employed. He wants me to work until 67 and then retire. It is not what I want to do, but he does not consult me. He has his plans for me.

Am I a human? Do I have a say? Am I alive? (A little voice in me cries, “Help me.” But who will answer my cry?)

I can’t sort it all out. Is this all too much or am I too confused? Does it make sense why I want out of it all? Why do I see no reason to have hope to go on? Why death is so appealing to life on Earth? How many times have I pleaded with God that I am ready? Why does he take the person who wants to live and leave the one who wants to die? If so many people need to die this day, I am volunteering for him.  “Here I am, God, take me.” Yet, I still breathe, and the soul so loved and needed and wanted by their family is taken to eternity. Why does life work this way?

I break down and cry. Real tears water up in my eyes and my forehead tightens in pain. My eyes drift to the right and I happen to see my Bible open. I peer onto the page. Proverbs is what I was last reading. “Give strong drink to him who is perishing, and wine to those who are bitter of heart. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more.” (Proverbs 31: 6-7). Even God, in his mercy, knows the pain of living and of human suffering.

I know I need help but I don’t want to spend $100 for counseling. Should I let my counselor know or should I ever care? Will anyone read this? Will anyone care?

(photo credit: Mirror by Tyutya on Deviant Art, materials 16 by Tyutya, when the sun goes down 584 by Tyutya)