Author: Tom (Page 65 of 71)

**Note: If you are sensitive to stories of suicide please do NOT read this piece.**

There was no telling when he had snapped.  But he did.  There was no telling when he had lost control.  But he had.  And now, swinging back and forth from the tree branch he had chosen specifically for this purpose, Teddy E had finally found peace in a stretch of living wood and a length of synthetic rope.

His face have been unrecognizable to anyone who had known him in life, but Teddy would not have wanted it any other way.  He felt unrecognizable to himself in the moments before  the end.  Gone were the flashes of joy and moments of rage that had so defined him in life.  Gone were the feelings of despair, of utter helplessness.  For the first time in Teddy’s life he felt in control, and he liked the feeling even if he knew the price he was going to pay to get it.

Nothing in life worked out for Teddy.  He felt lost since his earliest memory.  The beatings. The lies.  The deceit.  The humiliation.  Those were his constant companions and his truth.  He found people would more often than not lie to him, to each other, and to themselves to achieve something unremarkable and fleeting.  They would rather kick him in the stomach than offer him a hug.  Teddy had learned from the very beginning that people were capable of horrendous things, and they would often reward themselves for their crimes in the most stupendous of ways.  The motherfuckers would even…well, fuck if he wanted to say.

He learned to associate the words “I love you” with some of the most horrible acts he could imagine.  He would often get beat with objects not meant to touch human flesh while being told “I do this because I love you.”  He would see her tell him “I love you” just after fucking some random asshole who was, of course, not him.  In his twenties, Teddy would often cringe at the thought of the word, most likely remembering some scar on his body or mind caused in the very act of that word “love”.  Now, as he dangled freely from the tree his last thought was of how some of the last words his Love had said to him were

“I love you, forever. And because that – above all things – is true, I understand. And I let you go…”

Now, in the hours before his end he let himself go.  This world was done fucking with him.  The love he had been so wanting to share with it was not good enough, and neither was he. He loved passionately, fought passionately, and was rash in his pain and in his reply to it.  Yet, he loved, and he was sure that as those who knew him looked at the closed pine box where he rested they would finally remember his love and not his pain.  They would finally know him for who he was, not who the bastards created him to be and not whom he seemed powerless to control.

She would know the truth finally.  It was not his fear that defined him, but the power of his love.  His Lover would finally accept him as he was, and love him unconditionally.  She would forgive him as he laid in a box she had not constructed for him.  The walls of their lives, the very walls that she built and loved above all things, would finally cease to matter.  She would touch the crate that carried her man and never need ask “why?”  The answer was in the silence, the very weapon she used against him.

His tormentors would come as well.  The very thought of them made him shudder as he prepared his end.  They would feign tears while telling everyone how Teddy had always been troubled.  Gone would be the fond stories they used to tell about the beatings.  Absent would be the echoes of a past that drove him to his grave.  Blame would be shifted from the guilty to those unable to defend themselves as it had always been.  Yet, as he stared blankly at the top of the pine box that carried him he knew they knew.  The tears and fears that carried the boy into manhood were started by them.  Yeah, they knew.  The motherfuckers knew and he could almost see them smirk at the thought.

Mostly though, he wanted to dry the tears of his Love.  He knew that, for her, those tears were temporary.  She would move on, if she hadn’t already.  They all move on.  He would turn to his friends and tell a joke that would get them laughing again.  He would remind them of the good times, the laughter, and the shit that drove them together.  He would forget the bastards and their smirk and focus on those who were always the living part of his heart.  He would show them that his pain was finally over, and that they could move on knowing that he had finally done something out of love for himself.

He would never know if his Love had lied to him and if she was just a loving figment of his imagination who had left him to dangle as had all the others.  She had seen all of him.  He trusted her with those parts of him he otherwise kept locked in some vault in the back of his soul.  In the end, her protestations that he could let them out were the lie regardless of what else she had done.  He was better off living the lie with her than living the truth without her.  Still, in this moment he didn’t care.  He just wished for one more kiss, one more embrace, one more moment of pure ecstasy.  It would never come, but of course he would find his way through the darkened misty waters where pieces of his heart floated by like debris from a long-sunken ship.  This time, however, he would do it a much different way.

“I am sorry I hurt you all, but I had to leave.  Thank you for loving me more than I could love myself.  Smile you douche bags, I am finally happy.”

Now had come the time of release, and Teddy knew that peace was on its way.  He felt fear, almost like the fear you feel right before a crazy roller coaster ride.  Yet, the peace he was sure was coming made that fear almost seem nonexistent.  Suddenly, a wave of emotion came crashing down upon him.  He cried in that moment like he had never cried before, and the numbness that had carried him here was gone for a moment.  The tears of a lifetime came out of him, as did the pain and the loss.  God, if he could only go back in time he would.  He would make different choices.  He would love her better, and never leave her any room for doubt.  He would choose to believe, he would.  He would never let go of what he had or answer the phantom voices that drowned out every other sound in his life.  He would forgive.  He would know.  He would be saved.  He would…

The rope snapped to attention and he struggled.  It wasn’t, as some would describe had they seen it, a struggle for life.  No, Teddy E struggled in the end to get to the light faster.  He could feel warmth there, and he know that light and that warmth would never leave.  He sensed it loved him unconditionally and without question.  Finally.  The light…the warmth…unconditional love…truth…everything that had escaped him in that experience of life he decided to end were coming his way.  He could feel it, and he could almost grasp it.  It reminded him of holding his children.  It reminded him of holding his Lover.  It was like those small pieces of love, happiness and trust becoming the big pieces all at once.  He could exhale, finally, and trust that the inhalation was coming.  Yes, he laughed hard at the irony.

Dedicated to all of those souls lost https://www.facebook.com/puttingafaceonsuicide

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Ever just sit?  You know, those kind of sits where you forget you exist, what time it is, and what place you are at?  Everything just blends into everything else, and suddenly everything becomes nothing.  There is no feeling in you and all thought is gone.  You exist but you don’t, you feel but you can’t.

Sometimes I welcome those moments.  They help me escape and understand.  I believe this is what my soul must feel when not in a body and mind.  No thought.  No feeling.  No existence.  It’s why our souls become human.  They want to feel something, they want to experience.  So they make the choice to go from that nothing to this something.  We are born.

There is a certain melancholy to being human often interrupted by moments of pure happiness.  To those enlightened masters who suggest otherwise, I’d ask them to explain to me what gave them their perspective.  Each and every master who has ever preached the virtues of happiness does so from the perspective of suffering.  Each and every understanding of enlightenment is born from the deepest parts of suffering.  Transformation itself is suffering.  We are born to suffer so that we can know something else.

Our first acts of existence outside the womb are to suffer.  We are made to cry just to get us to breathe, that sudden slap on the ass announcing our arrival to this world.  We know hunger for the first time, and we begin to know human needs.  If we are lucky, we are born to a nurturer, someone who gives us her breast in our moments of need; someone who tenderly caresses our humanity in our moments of utter confusion.  I often wonder if these needs and wants come as a dramatic relief to a soul who had just awoken from their own sit moment.

My most recent slap in the ass comes at the hand of a man walking by my car.  I had forgotten about this traffic and the time I had spent in this same exact spot.  I had forgotten about the frustration of sitting still in traffic on a Friday afternoon.  It was welcome relief spoiled by this man just casually strolling down the sidewalk enjoying his walk.  He had a smile that betrayed a joy, and his walk suggested that he had found some happiness in this moment.  I could only wonder why.

What expectation was met that brought him here?  Maybe he received an unexpected message from his lover.  What did that message say?  My mind conjured up the possibilities.  “I just wanted to say I love you.”  “You mean the world to me.”  “Get home, I’m naked and waiting.”  “I want you beyond measure.”  I could feel a smile cross my lips at the thought.

Maybe he was just leaving from his lover’s house.  The kiss goodbye and the promise of seeing her again had him smiling.  The feeling of being loved and of loving when the gift and the giver unite to form one singularity of purpose can create such joy in the human heart.  Maybe his expression was evidence of that joy.  He mattered to her, and she wanted him.  She gave his love right back to him, and it made him fly.  She had made him feel superhuman, or rather exposed to him that part that was superhuman.  He could still feel her there, and as a result couldn’t stop smiling.

I’m not unhappy alone, but I know that joy that rushes into me when made to feel like I exist outside of myself.  That I matter.  That I’m wanted.  I don’t want to get all metaphysical here.  Time is short and I simply want to experience.  I don’t care what part of me is feeling that joy, or why.  I don’t care what is happening.  I’m like a hungry bear who has just found a jar of peanut butter.  I just want to eat it, feel my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, feel the need for water to wash it all down.  I’m tired of demonizing the experience itself for some notion of freedom that doesn’t truly exist in this realm.  We are all prisoners of expectation, of need, of desire and of ego.  Even those who preach the virtues of not having expectations suffer from having them.  That very idea is an expectation.  Even those who preach the about non-attachment seem to have an attachment to the idea.  We are, after all, spirits having a human experience and not the other way around.

Maybe he is happy because he isn’t sitting in this infernal traffic.  He can walk freely, without encumbrance, while I sit in this mostly plastic box going nowhere.  To those who say a car is freedom, welcome to my world where I often sit imprisoned in a coiled line of vehicles all going nowhere quickly.  Yes, if I was walking seeing this mess and the frustrated people in it I guess I would be happy too.  Yes, Mr. Happy Man, smile away.  Gas is $4 a gallon and I’m burning it just sitting here while you are burning calories rubbing my nose in my own insanity.  Ok, I rubbing my own nose in it (I can almost hear your response).

Of course it could be nothing.  Maybe he is smiling because he doesn’t have a lover.  Maybe he is smiling because he doesn’t need a car.  Maybe he is smiling just because he is here, or there, in that place he is supposed to be.  He is something superhuman himself in not having those needs the rest of us seem to have.  Maybe his life is just one long sit moment and that smile evidence of all of this everything I see being nothing he sees.  We aren’t just literally in two different places, we are figuratively there as well.

So, Mr. Buddha Lao Tzu, you have found the key to not experiencing the experience.  You think you are in the game because you are watching it.  You watch players like me spill our blood and guts on the field and then take credit for the victory simply because you observed the sport.  You play it safe in the bleachers.  Your clothes stay clean while ours get muddy.  I get it.  I’m just not sure I could ever want to be there.  Even through the suffering and the joys, the fights and the ecstasy I’m not sure I’d replace the experience with the observation of it.  I may get next to you on the bleachers one day, but I will do so as a retired player of the game.  You, my friend, are always welcome to come down to the field and join those of us playing.

Of course you could be retired having learned the game from the inside.  If that is the case, good play, my friend, good play.  Maybe you haven’t read the book, maybe you wrote it.  Maybe you are me in some possible future.  Maybe I’m seeing a future me strolling down the street to my empty apartment without a care in the world.  The possibility itself seems so far away.  I guess that is why they call it the future.

I look away to see the cars ahead of me moving again.  I’m heading home, whatever that means.

(#6

I sit and I stare blindly at the wall.  There is nothing there, it’s just a wall.  Beyond it, there is something, but I can’t see it.  All I can see is a white, flat and bland wall.

I hate that fucking wall.  I’m not sure why, but I do.  I should love it.  Right now, it is the only thing paying any attention to me.  But I hate it.  I fucking hate that wall.

I’m sick of fighting just to be me.  I’m sick of feeling like me isn’t good enough for anything.  I’m sick of dying a little each minute of each day.  I just want to be loved for who I am.  Am I that bad that I don’t deserve it?  Do the more human parts of me mean more to the world than those parts that are beautiful?  Why is it that my humanity shines brighter than my Divinity?  Why is that all you can see?  What am I doing wrong here?

Why can’t you see me?  Why is it all so much more important to you?  We love those who leave this place, who finally find freedom from all of this bullshit.  They become important as they lie in a box.  They become good enough then.  Suddenly, even if it is for a brief moment, they matter.  The shell of form lies there feeling nothing while those who suddenly love it, miss it, want it and cry for it feel what they should have felt all along.  It’s all momentary, they will forget the dead quickly just as they forgot the living.  That rotting body will once again become anonymous to all except the things that eat away at it.  It’s a tragic irony; in his demise the man can become a slave to the things that eat away at him just as when he walked the Earth.

I love so much, but can’t seem to show it in a way that is good enough.  I cry real tears that seem to evaporate before they hit the ground.  I can’t get it right.  All I can do is pretend that I am.  I relive the countless memories of not being good enough, of failing, of hating myself for just being me.  Love me motherfucker, please, because I love you.  I do.  I want to.  I want to hold you.  I want to you to laugh and dance and love.  I want you to hold me.  I want you to press on those spots that hurt so they can heal.  I want to feel my head finally release into your hands and know that those hands will catch me.

I don’t want this.  I don’t want everything else to matter but me.  I want to heal this and move on.  I want to be part of the swirl of activity in your morning.  I don’t want those truths I send to you to be ignored while everything else becomes important.  I want to matter, to know that I am in your thoughts and your heart and to feel it because I hate this wall.  It’s cold.  It’s bland.  It makes me feel lonely.

I make my own bed.  I have to lie in it.  Why do I do these things?  Why can’t I hear anything?  Why am I deaf to the song I want to hear so loudly in my heart?  Why is despair the only thing I can feel?  Fuck.  At least I can feel something.  It’s the numbness I fear more than anything.  When that comes I just don’t know what to do.  Some call that “moodiness”.  It’s truly numbness.  I can’t feel anything in those moments.  I just want to leave.  I don’t want to be here anymore.

I run from the numbness.  I hide from it.  Because I fear it.  Right now the tightness in my gut and the sadness in my heart are much better than the numbness.  Feeling something is always better than feeling nothing at all.  At least I know I am still alive.  I do, in those moments, often hope the only feeling that will return is the way I feel when I am next to you.  It never does because I’m not good enough to have that feeling be real in your absence.  I question my Soul for wanting to have this experience.  I question myself for allowing it.  I question living because it doesn’t really feel alive at all.

I’m done hurting.  I need to be the real me, the me that loves beyond question and trusts beyond limits.  I need to stop hearing this shit in my head and knowing that how I feel when you are sitting next to me is the real feeling my Soul wants to know.  I’ve felt the sadness and ran from the numbness for far too long.  It needs to end.

In this year where nothing is the same now then when it started, I am at my most important crossroads.  Here is where I live or die, where I walk into the light or succumb to the numbness.  What do I want here?  What do I truly want?  Do I want to be a slave to a past I don’t truly understand or know?  Do I want to be like every star in the sky and shine for the world to see?  Each and every step I have taken in this fucking experience has led me to this cliff.  I have to jump, there is no choice.  Turning back is not an option as the dogs circle and the prepare to attack.  No, I have to jump, so now as I leap from it I must decide either to plummet to the Earth or to fly.  Yes, I know the choice is mine.

My legs are shaking and my fingers can barely get the words out of me fast enough.  Now is the time.  Right now.