That Other Me

I walk and walk and walk, taking a roundabout course from my home, unable to settle thoughts much too quick to be contained or moderated, the agitation from their mania pulsing through my body.

Is this it?

That’s a question growing increasingly prevalent in my forties – to have emerged from five years of severe agoraphobia, decades of anxiety and all these other mental health challenges, only to be here, much more capable in some ways but mentally unstabler in others; circumstantially unsatisfied, physically debilitated with chronic neck issues, chronic, degenerative leg and nerve issues, and various health concerns that might be nothing, but will forever need to be monitored because they could be something.

In 2006, I would take epic walks that would last hours, burning the anxiety like it was an excess fuel that needed to be spent. Any other year, I might’ve had a breakdown; I might’ve needed to be medicated (although by 2006 I’d sworn that was something I’d never do again); I might’ve retreated back into my safe little bubble; but, right now, the walking isn’t doing it for me.

I think about my funeral – suicide’s something that’s always popped into my head. Once upon a time, I thought that I would’ve taken my own life by 35 (although some of that might’ve been a result of suicidal ideation caused by the meds I was on from the age of 30 to 35 – a popular side effect of that particular antidepressant).

Now I’m 45.

I’ve jumped the ideation.

I wonder instead about what happens afterward – not the life after death, although that’s always been a question I’ve ruminated over. My parents are strictly Orthodox in their religion, so they believe in God and something more. I’ve read about various spiritual modalities and believe there’s something. What exactly, I don’t know. But that’s not the question now.

What happens on this Earth once I’m gone?

It would be a typical Orthodox funeral – sombre and oppressive. Maybe funerals should be that, should be all grim and sad and solely commemorative, but it feels like the stateliness serves some ceremonial functionality rather than genuinely honours the decedent’s life.

My family will be there – parents, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well my friends. How long will these people miss me? Everybody moves on. That’s a reality. The world stops for nobody. It’s not that people are compelled to move forward. Life drags them back into its downstream. Then it’s swim, tread water, or drown.

I wonder how long the pain of my departure stays would stay with others, whether I matter in any real meaningful way, and when that grief gets compartmentalized – stuffed in the attic with the rest of the clutter. I know these are selfish thoughts, but they are the minutiae of suicide consideration (or at least how I’m thinking about it).

I don’t see faces at my funeral. It’s an amalgamation of people from so many different corners of my life. I can guess who some of them will be. I wonder if there’ll be some surprise attendees. That would be nice. But it’s a hubbub. That’s what collections of people are. Hubbubs. There’s a stupid word. Hub. Bubs.

I do see black. Lots and lots of black. Orthodox funerals are full of people in dark clothes (and preferably black). I don’t know if that’s mandatory, but that’s what happens. And it’ll be a shit day. Overcast. I don’t think it’ll rain. But everything’s grey.

But that might just be an extrapolation of this walk: it’s overcast now as evening nears, and the grey threatens to thicken into a blackness that will engulf me so I never see light again. My mind’s never gone this far down this particular line of thinking, so I experience something different to every other time I’ve thought about suicide.

I feel the call of death, like that was always a remote possibility, hovering out there, somewhere, but right now it’s almost within sight, and it’s definitely within earshot, because I can hear it, I can hear it inviting me, and that strikes a terror that resonates from my core to everything that constitutes me.

What would it take to defuse that terror? Another friend took his own life, and mutual acquaintances had said that while he’d been down for a while, he’d been much more upbeat recently. A friend who worked in grief and knew about these things said that was likely because he’d already made the decision to go, and relieved of the pressure he felt unburdened.

I wonder if he made that choice consciously, or if that thought process just ticked over and instantaneously became his new normal: from, I am going to live to, I am going to die. Maybe there is no noticeable transition. It’s not day turning to night. It just is night and you never remember when it was day.

My friend left a note, telling his family he’d been unhappy, and that he knew they wouldn’t want him to be unhappy, so he’d taken this course. That was amazing that he could reconcile that choice until he felt he was doing the right thing for everybody, and everybody would understand.

That scares me worst, until the fear scythes through my head. Am I even a party to this decision? Or does the case for it mount until it’s made for me, and instead of being here, walking, worrying, I’m walking, relieved, that this suffering won’t last much longer?

I have to summon all my will, whirlpool all my brainpower, and herd it into the conscious effort that I need to find a way to draw back, I have to find a way to create that distance again, to find the day, and from the point I get home, the focus needs to be on living, as hard as that might be.

But something else has also touched me, and it might’ve only managed a fingertip, but I know it’s something that will never again let me go.

Not truly.