Passive Ideations

"Perhaps what I’m looking for isn’t land at all, but other people out here with me. Trying, and treading, and learning to live in the water." - Anna Borges 4/2/19 

***Be aware, this post has Sensitive Issue(s)

Robyn Couillard had the courage to post such an important post the other day; on suicide.  We do not want to talk about it.  We do not want others to talk about it.  We do not want to think about it.  We do not want others to think about it.  It is thought to be taboo, frightening, sinful...yadda yadda.  But, here, I gird up my loins and tell you something about late aging and what our thoughts might be.

Caveat:  I do not, often, have suicidal ideation.  I only think about it when the nerve pain has been so horrible in the past.  I do think about end of life, though, and there is the wrinkle.

We know that life expectancy is circa 86 years, with no extenuating circumstances that might shorten that.  I have a sense we have a certain number of heartbeats and then that is all.  I have used up a great deal of heartbeats due to fear, stress, birthing, etc.  I am not living with a yah yah idea of growing older than I should have.  I do not want to slip into the dementia gene in my birth family..oh, do not let me live to 94 - 96 and not know I am still living.  I hate pain.  I hate chronic pain.  I know where I draw a line in the sand. 

If any of us were honest, there are times when we have felt like we just wanted to die.  Probably the worst time of it was when Man Hands died.  I wanted, wished, begged, for it.  I would not take the decision by my own hands, though.  And, there have been others times where abuse laid its heavy hands on me.  And, there were times that , what I now know as 'small sorrows', jabbed at me as if it were an answer to anything.   Sometimes I figured God would be more kind than people in the world.  Sometimes I just felt 'done!"  

I think courage and bravery took over, those dark times.  and, perhaps, someone or something simply saved me.  I know that, as I have gone beyond the 60s, that thoughts have come about how I WANT to die.  I came up with how I DID NOT want to die.  I have made peace with the thought that I definitely want a DNR.  In fact, I am tattooing it on my chest (Just above the breast removal scars).  I have told my kids I will haunt them if they keep me alive, for their benefit(s) when I get a chance to go now.  This is something we, of an age, need to consider and make peace with.

It has been a century since I sunk into those gray days and dark nights of the soul that led me to thoughts, of such, when I was younger.  I have had a life after death experience.  I am , seriously, not afraid.  I saw no evil monsters inferring hell.  I saw no angels with wings.  But, what I experienced during that time without time was so incredibly beautiful and peaceful and the hum that was there...oh, it was so beautiful.  And, a hand reached out to me, then, and offered me the chance.  But, my baby was six months old.. and there were a one year old, a two year old, and a five year old, and a thirteen year old, and a fifteen and seventeen year old that I could not leave behind just then and I begged to return.  Return I did.  It was not a hard decision, then.  I had the choice.  I turned it down.  I would not do so now.

As the article says, "I am treading water" now.  There are others here, bobbing along with me.  I still have 'life preservers', yes.  But there will come a day when that is not enough.  I will, gratefully, let go of that and allow myself to float.  I know that my adoptive mother begged to die before her mind slipped, eternally, away.  Her body was left in pain, in gangrene, in nothingness, and it was not blissful.  She flinched in pain.  Often, even though her mind was no longer there.  I refuse to go to that suffering place.  I believe in a next place that is simply there and no divided bits of heaven where more pure people go or where more not pure people go.  I believe in another way of living that is not at all like this hard place down here on earth.

I have begun to prepare.  I am writing letters to my most beloveds.  I am starting to give away some of my precious things to those I wish to have them.  No last minute in-family fighting that way.  I know that so much of my art and what feels like 'precious' to me, now, might not be, for my kids.  I know releasing myself of this life will mean releasing a lot of things that are earthly precious to me.  There is a feeling that I need to really get a 'move on' and find places of dignity and grace that will allow me to make the right decision 'when', and 'if', I make it.  

All this, according to the reading, is about passive ideation.  And I am at peace with it.  I am beginning to talk about it.  It took courage to say such, but there are others who know and feel this way.  I will collect myself and eventually tell my tribe, each, in an individual way, that will help them know why DNR.  I am ok.  We are ok.  It is ok.  

©Carol Desjarlais 5.6.19

https://theoutline.com/post/7267/living-with-passive-suicidal-ideation?utm_source=contributor_pages&fbclid=IwAR3-ldfOqqvjrmP67VdOotm7NOqIc9NUklzu6UZnMZyGxeZhNzNLQ0-Cy8s&zd=1&zi=kia4yzkq