Life and Loss

Death in any form is hard to deal with. Some have time to process and accept it. Some have their life taken so fast there's no time for that. And others take their own life maybe to escape the pain, maybe because it's easy, maybe because they feel there's no other way.

Death always seems unfair. Because it is, but it's necessary. You live and then die. That's the simplest way to put it. But life isn't simple and neither is death. I, myself, have a very hard time processing it all. One minute someone is here, and the next they're gone.

What's scary to me is how easy it is to end a life. The fact that I could kill someone right now if I wanted to terrifies me. The fact that someone could kill me right now frightens me. The fact that I could kill myself right now petrifies me. Because one second is all it takes. One second of insanity and a life can be lost.

Fear, hate, anger, sadness, desperation.

Mental illness, substance abuse, bullying, sexual abuse.

The media.

Thinking you have to look a certain way, act a certain way, say certain things to make you important. To make your life worth living. A life worth living. 

There are so many factors and possible ways to die. So many what if's. It could happen, what if it did happen, when will it happen, why does it happen, should it happen. I could get cancer, or be murdered. I could become depressed, or feel isolated and take my own life. So many reasons to live, and so many reasons to die.

Death is inevitable, but living isn't.

And that's scary. People are alive, but don't live. People feel the need to take a life, to take their own life, but why? If death is inevitable why wouldn't you want to live while you can? Why wouldn't you want that for another human being? And I know it's not that easy, but it also doesn't have to be that hard.

Suicide and murder. It seems so drastic. Is killing yourself, or someone else, really gonna make you feel better in the end? Maybe? But if you're dead how can you be sure? We want to think they're in a better place now. We hope. And hope is really all we can do.

And there are so many opposing views on suicide. It's selfish, it's an easy way out, it's a permanent solution to a temporary problem. I'm still not sure where I stand on the topic. Two of my uncles have committed suicide, one as recently as this past October, and I'm still not sure. And I guess it's because I see both sides. I understand they felt hopeless and that it was the only way. I understand the pain they must have felt. I understand that they may have thought it was for the best. Shaking as they bring the gun to their head and pull the trigger.

But I also understand how the person who had to find them must have felt. Walking into the garage and seeing your husbands lifeless body laying in a pool of his own blood. Having to explain to your kids where their dad is and what he's done. Having to relive it and tell other people. People they knew, people they worked for, people they loved. I understand the pain it brings onto other people. It hurts everyone they ever met, everyone they ever knew. Could I have done something to prevent it? I must have been a bad wife, a bad friend, a bad person for not realizing something was wrong.

Maybe if the world in general was a better place people wouldn't need to find a way out. If we replaced all of the negativity with positivity. If we loved one another, while still being able to have and appreciate differences. If we realized we don't all have to be the same, or share the same views, or even get along, but be able to accept people for who they are. Love them regardless and because of it. Because when you think about it how sad is it all? People feel so bad they need to escape life, without even knowing the alternative. Life after death could be worse. We don't want to believe that, but it still could.

As a teenager, when you see someone, your own age especially, die in a freak accident, or take their own life, it makes everything that much more incomprehensible. Because in the back of your mind you're constantly thinking that it could have been you. I could have gotten sick, I could have felt helpless, that could have been me. But it wasn't.

But it wasn't and that was for a reason. Everything happens for a reason. There's a reason the sun comes up in the morning and the moon at night. People have their reasons. They may not be the right reasons, or rational reasons. But good things can't always happen. Because without the bad, we wouldn't appreciate the good. There's a certain amount of darkness needed to see the stars.