A Walking Paradox

Some days the rhythm of breathing is one filled with silence that covers your thoughts, words, and actions with a veil.
That has been the past 8 days.

I have retreated deeply into myself . . . taken refuge in the covers . . . been at a loss for words to explain how I've felt or to share where I've been. In glimpses of moments I have found relief . . . and in agonizing hours I have mulled possible means to an end. Always wondering where this came from . . . and then I am reminded . . . in just a few weeks, it will be the time of year 9 years ago when I chose to end it all.

I don't think I will ever forget what it felt like to wake up still alive . . . after over-riding my own primal instinct to choose death. I don't think I will ever forget what it felt like to choose death . . . and to have it ripped away from me and replaced with life.

My body has certainly not forgotten. It seems to take me through a cycle of hell every year in an attempt to flush the past from its' cells . . . only to find 365 days later that some residue still remains.

Some psychologists would say that suicide is an attempt to kill a part of your soul that no longer needs to exist. That represents a stain so deeply entrenched in the warp and weft of your life that you feel the only way to rides yourself of it, is to cut it out. That the need to separate from this piece of yourself is so strong, that you will go to all ends to remove it, to be released from it, to be free. When I first read that several years ago, it resonated. There were layers of stains that I wanted freedom from . . . a never-ending cycle of remembering that brought pain and suffering. A good day, for me, then, was having fifteen minutes of space in my head and heart where I didn't want to end it all . . . where life was bearable . . . where I could breathe.

And so, in this past week, as this urge has come to the surface again, I have found myself of two mindsets about it. One in which I have allowed myself to sit in that space and to wrap myself in the whispers of madness that suffocated me so long ago. And one in which I have acknowledged that nine years ago I did die, and that each year since then, I have died and been reborn again.

I am, what one practitioner referred to as, a walking paradox.

A paradox that was birthed on the day that the medication that was supposed to help me live was used as a means to help me die. A paradox that took root when I woke up alive and made a promise that I would stop taking all of the medication and find a different answer for myself.

Nine years later, I am living that answer and using it as a foundation to help others.

For every moment these past 8 days that I have felt terrible . . . the moments where I have worked with others in supporting their health and wellness have been moments where I have felt alive and whole . . . moments where the residue of my past has washed away.

And so once again, I find myself in the process of dying . . . and hoping that if I truly embrace this loss . . . if I let go of this event in my life that so deeply defined me . . . that I will step fully into living.