A Very Slow Friday

I usually write in blue. I feel more comfortable in blue, more like myself. It's hard to explain. I was thinking about death today. A few years ago I was referred to a regular guy of a psychiatrist, first name, Michael, surname initial C. My own dear doctor, whom I respect and admire and like very, very much, no longer wanted to care for that part of my illness. Hell, she was already taking care of the "crippling" arthritis, the type 2 diabetes, the high blood pressure, the coronary artery disease and the neuropathy and other complications from diabetes. She thought I needed to see a specialist for the constant state of worry, anxiety and deep sadness that hovered over me like a little dark rain cloud. So I saw Dr. Michael C, PhD, MD. He was very nice to talk to. He seemed to listen well to what I was telling him and he forked over the tissues when I needed them. When I am sad, I tend to just leak tears. No sobbing and such, unless you really get me going. No – the corners of my most of the time smiling mouth turn down and tears just slide out from under my lashes and roll a bit forlornly down my cheeks. So, he forked over the tissues and I would mop up the tears. After reading what my own Dr. Octo had to say about me from her notes from the ten years I'd been seeing her, and after listening to me, Dr. Michael C. gave me a diagnosis of Major Depression with Passive Suicidality. Whoa! I never heard of that. Not the major depression part. I've been treated for depression by my Dr. Octo and several other doctors before her for the past sixteen years. No – it was the passive suicidality part. I don't see how those two words can go together. I mean, can you passively kill yourself? I know that people take too many meds they shouldn't be taking all at once but who save themselves, either by vomiting up what they took or calling someone for help; or by slitting their wrists incorrectly. Sometimes that kind of person didn't really mean to kill themselves, but, oops! But I don't see trying to commit suicide, whether you succeed or not, to be a passive thing. Then I learned that passive suicide is what I like to think of as the "'It's a wonderful life' syndrome." Thinking about what life would be like if… It's kind of silly, though, because I wouldn't find out, would I? No. I'd be dead. I happen to have very strong feelings about suicide. I think it's a selfish, even vicious act. It makes me sad to think that there are people in this world who can feel so low that they think it won't matter to a single soul if they live or die. Or who feel that life is so hopeless, so truly awful that they would rather be dead. Whatever religious beliefs I have now, if any, or have had in the past, I just don't know what will happen to me when I die. Not one of us does. We hope there's something else. That's what all the varied organized religious groups are selling us. Hope that there is something for us to experience after this life is finished and we "shuffle off this mortal coil", as Shakespeare put it. Religions, whatever name they give to either a single creator or several or dozens – they all like to call it faith, but who are they kidding? It's a hope, a prayer, a wish, a promise. Either we stop when we die. Whatever makes me different from the next person I meet just comes to its end. Stops. Turns off like a light. Or … there's something else. It's a bald fact that no one on this planet of ours has ever come back to tell us where they've been and if they ever did – how could they prove it? Nope – we are all travelers on our still, for now, blue watery planet. Not a single one of us knows what has happened to those gazillions who have died or what will happen to us when we do stop breathing. When our heart stops beating. Human beings, such as we are, like to hope. And a hell of a lot of us likes to seek; to find out what's next in our lives.

Would I deliberately cause pain to the people who have spent part of their precious lives loving me? Caring about me? Do I want to hurt a spouse who cherishes me and shares my life, or a child who loves me more and in always changing ways as he or she grows to adulthood and beyond? Could I hurt the parent who gave me life, by throwing that gift back into her or his face?

Do I really want to choose not to find out what happens next in this life?? I sure as hell don't. I would never, ever take my own life.

I've heard it said that life can suck beyond the telling. How true. No one lives a perfect life. Life is decidedly not easy. Sometimes, for some, it's damn hard, over and over. But … there are those times, be they great or small, when life is glorious.

So, I've gone through a medicine cabinet's amount of meds for anxiety and depression from Buspar to Zoloft, to Effexor, to Paxil, to Wellbutrin to Cymbalta to Prozac. Each of them worked for a little while. Since my depression stems from chronic pain and the inevitability of my illnesses, I try to hold onto my sense of humor. I try to accept my problems and difficulties and try to see things in a different light, to put things in perspective. I know that there are many people whose lives are harder than mine. There are people, who have lives of utter hardship, yet they persevere and they prevail. A friend mentioned the poet e. e. cummings today. I like his poems. At first, I liked them because they are so quirky. He's the poet who didn't use much capitalization or what is widely thought of as correct punctuation and spacing. Later, I settled down to actually read more and more of his poems. I hadn't known for many years that he has written such lovely and powerful erotic poetry. I know I wasn't mature enough to understand those particular poems until I reached a certain age. My favorite of any of his works is a poem called,

i thank you god for this most amazing.

This is it:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
wich is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

 

What I will hold onto is the hope that tomorrow will be a glorious day and so will the days after it. I have hope. Without it, I might as well be dead.

I'm just sayin'.