Common Sense

There area few moments during the course of your life that stop you in your tracks-that seemingly come from out of nowhere and shatter your whole system of beliefs. You remember these moments because they were either your innocence lost or shaped the new direction your life would now take.

I have just had one of those moments.

It is a commonly held belief that suicide is not the right thing to do. You will hear poeple talk about how "dumb" it is and some think it is only for the weak. Others hold that is the ultimate act of selfishness. On the tv show, Ghost Whisperer, a survivor tells a suicide ghost, "you hurt for only two minutes, we're hurting for the rest of our lives."

We are all hypocrites.

How many times has someone denounced suicide while smoking a cigarette? Who talks about smokers while eating Big Macs? Who says how foolish it is to neglect your health but hasn't been to a doctor in year? And who says they no longer need this medication, they feel all better now, really.

We are killing ourselves.

I take medication to keep anxiety at baby and suicidal thoughts out of my head. It keeps the knife away from my wriss, but the poisonous food in my body.

I can trust enough to share my body with a man, but not enough to shed the pounds which insulate it.

I can tell my brother to take his insulin, but not my own prescription refilled.

I can talk to a group member about her financial difficulties and then go shopping for frivolous material things.

I can condemn my friend for going back to an abusive man, but keep poisonous men in my own life.

I am a hypocrite. I'm not practicing what I preach. So now, what will I do about it? What will you do about it?

This could end up being one of those life changing moments where from this point on everything is different.

Or it could just be another day. The choice is up to you.

High Hopes

Here is the post describing when Ronan and I first met. I hadn't felt something like that in a very long time.

With or Without You

So I've been talking to Ronan again. Well, for awhile now. We both want to be together and we both seem ready to commit to this forever. I know we've had so many ups and downs and Ronan has changed his mind so many times before. I know some people will think I'm foolish for even putting my heart out there with him again. Oh well. I don't really know what else to say to that, because I want to be with him and he is the only person that I can see myself with for the rest of my life. Maybe I'm a hopeless romantic, maybe I'm just hopeless, but I just can't walk away from him, from us.

There are worse things to be than to be in love. We may do foolish things, and sometimes we may have our hearts broken, but we keep doing it because the pleasant glow of love is so inviting and feeling loved by someone you love opens up a whole new world or emotions, sensation and experience. As if this is what life is meant to be. A love greater than that of yourself. Whether it is for the work of God, for a life partner, or for a child or loved one, without love, one has not lived.

But ask me again in a month's time, and I might not be so enthusiastic about said emotion. Such is the nature of humans. It really does feel good to FEEL again. For so long, I was numb and didn't even realize it. While I didn't feel hurt or sad, I didn't feel love or joy, either. This is the tradeoff some people make in order to protect themselves. This is the tradeoff I made when I lost Mike after being attacked in high school. The whole range and scope of emotional hurt that whole experience thrust upon my fragile heart at such a young age had such an effect on me, I allowed myself to feel no more.

I was just looking through my papers from when I was hospitalized last year. I had writings from dreams or pieces of dreams that I felt were significant. One of them said, "This is God's gift to us, our love, our lives shared." I was referring at that time to Mike, the aforementioned lost love at that vulnerable time in my life. I had just gotten back in contact with him after over ten years of heartache. We talked, we reminisced, we kissed. I thought my life had come full circle. That everything both he and I had experienced this last decade was leading us to this day, the day we could finally be together again. I felt we had to learn about life and ourselves so that we could be better people for each other, so that we could really work, and not be the disaster of our younger days. He was in the process of a divorce, I had just returned from the UK. Our lives had taken us so far away from one another, and yet, here we were, at the same place, emotionally, connecting, longing, loving. We talked of what might have been, joked that maybe we should've gotten married when we were sixteen, we cried at the time we lost, at the hurt from the past and we looked into each other's eyes and connected again as if there had been no time at all. When we kissed, it was as if we had never kissed another. I was so overwhelmed by the amount of emotions I was experiencing. It was like the flip side of all that hurt I had felt so many years before. Now, I was overtaken by love, hope and joy.

Lightheaded, I hurried home and pulled out all our old letters, pictures, cards, gifts, anything that was related to what we once were. I smiled knowingly at all these items that I had cried over before, amazed by my happy ending. These expressions of love were no longer ironic tokens, but now symbols of how far we came, expressions of the beginning of our love, stories to tell the grandchildren. I was elated going through these things, making copies, putting memory books together. Then I realized that now we had all the time in the world.

The problem with being up so high is that it is a pretty steep, hard fall down. A week later, when he told me he wanted to get back together with his wife, I was CRUSHED. It was like my nightmare scenario had come true. From time to time over these years apart, I would have a dream that he and I were back together, everything being peachy, and then, he would look at me, the expression on his face not being the honest, loving one of a moment earlier, but of a snide, cocky man who laughed in my face saying it was all a joke, he could never love me again. I felt like a fool.

So, like in my dream, I felt like a fool. He explained to me the different degrees of love he had for me and for his wife. That the love for her was far superior and the love for me did not even come close. I was broken. I couldn't believe that my happy ending was really a rebound fling. I couldn't comprehend the fact that he loved someone else more than I loved him. Worse, that I loved him more than he could ever love me.

This, along with other life stressors at the time is what caused me to be hospitalized.

As I read the words in the notebook about this love being God's gift to us, I was really taken aback. I couldn't imagine feeling so strongly. It was an emotion that I no longer had. When I think about the life I want, and the love I want, it is only Ronan that I want. I'm happy that I'm over my previous relationship, but I can't help but wonder, will I too, become broken over what I believe to be my life love?

I can only say that if I thought that were the case, I wouldn't be doing it. I wouldn't be with him, I wouldn't be planning my life with him. I am willing to take the chance of the extreme hurt and pain, because the payoff is too rich to let go.