An Unsettling Answer

This morning, I gave an honest answer to what I suppose is a hypothetical question. It’s a question I face every morning, every evening, and every time my family reminds me of what my true worth to them. It’s an answer that is not politically correct. I’m told it is not medically correct either. It’s so disturbing to some, I have been privately told I need to be incarcerated in a hospital and forcibly medicated to save me from myself.

What makes this amusing is the question. “How do you keep on living when you don’t want to?”

My answer is simple. It’s something that has worked for me since I decided to stop living for others and find a reason for myself. I have a set of goals, and until those goals are completed, I will fight tooth and nail to continue living. As it happens, my list of goals continue to grow, and as such, I no longer have a scheduled expiration date. I found a reason to live.  This is a good thing, right?

Apparently not.

“You ungrateful wretch! How dare you throw away what your mother gave you!” This always makes me laugh, great peals of unsettling laughter. You mean the person that has told me to my face that she has regretted ever bearing me and considers me her greatest shame? The person that intervened in my life only because she was concerned I would embarrass her and destroy her good name? Really? My continued existence is a blight that she can’t wait to erase.

I always have to ask, why do those that make this appeal, fall on what my mother would think? Why not my father? He had a hand in conceiving me. Or does he not count? To those that make this argument, he doesn’t. Because he didn’t carry me for nine months in his own body. Gee, guys, thanks for completely discounting the person that taught me determination.

“You’re a fucking coward for considering suicide! You just want the easy way out!” Yea, because living with the aftermath of sexual and mental abuse from childhood to adulthood is so easy to bear. Just think of unicorns, ponies, and teddy bears and it will all become just another tale. Never mind my family has derided me for the sexual abuse, first claiming it didn’t happen, then saying I didn’t scream loud enough because I must have enjoyed it. (I was in 3rd grade, she was 18 years old.) Why consider ending it when I have this (and others) thrown in my face every time I start to feel down. Silly me, I should just shut up and take it like a good little misbred bitch should, because it’s so easy to live when the very people you depend on take turns shitting on you for something that was out of your control. Such a delightful life, I’m so grateful.

“Someone should report you! You need to be hospitalized for your own good! They have medication to make the suicidal thoughts go away.” Oh, really now. Let’s talk about that. Let’s talk about how the doctors listened to the very people that were tormenting me and made sure to let me know my “lies and stories” wouldn’t be listened to. Let’s talk about starting mood stabilizers at far too high a dosage and claiming the psychosis that followed were proof that I need to be on even higher doses. “It all settles out over time.” Yes, so does brain damage.

Let’s talk about starting a cocktail that was known to have severe side effects, then adding more prescriptions to deal with the side effects. Let’s talk about gaining 90 pounds in 4 months, and being told I’m a greedy pig and food addicted even though my food intake had dropped to one small meal a day. Let’s talk about someone going to the judge behind my back and claiming I had become uncontrollable and in need of forced hospitalization. What prompted this, was me asking for my medical records and a medical encyclopedia so I could start looking up this stuff for myself. How dare I question what the doctors prescribed. Such a nice life to be forced upon me.

By the way, of the fourteen different medications I was put on in 8 months, not a single one made the suicidal thoughts go away. Just made it damn near impossible to coordinate my movements long enough to try and put any plan into action.

I managed to keep my head clear long enough to start faking taking the pills. Even when the nurses checked my mouth, they thought I was being compliant. As the episodes dropped in number and severity, they started dropping the medicines I was prescribed. None of them knew I had quit taking nearly everything cold turkey, and was clearing my head on my own.

Everything I did for myself, was against medical advice. I had no safety net. I had no fall back plan. It was a level of craziness in itself, I do admit. But, I lived, and I still live.

“What would [Deity] think of this, you are damning yourself!” Well, let’s see. I was a Christian when everything came to a head, and this very question was asked by the nurses in the hospital. I told them what my own pastor said to me at the time, “I was beyond redemption, and cursed by demons anyway. Purge the flesh to save the soul.”. For some reason, the nurses didn’t have anything to say to that. I took that to mean my life really was worthless and that my death would be justified.

Now that I am pagan, and currently under Loki’s thumb, I would say that he wouldn’t go out of his way to convince me otherwise. I’ve noted the Norse Pantheon are very much, “Do as you will, and reap the consequences there of.”. I also believe in reincarnation and rebirth, so I want to make sure all my current obligations are taken care of before I hit the reset button. Oh look, there’s that goals thing again.

I find it unbelievable that people would think piling on a huge ass pile of guilt would be comforting and convincing to someone that already has such a low view of themselves. When I hear these kind of “arguments”, I wonder if the person making them isn’t really the sick one. If they have some sort of unresolved guilt that they are projecting onto the “sick” person instead of owning up to their own hurts.

One size doesn’t fit all. What is comforting statements to one person may be confirmation of damnation to another. An random thread on Facebook isn’t the place to try and force people into a Politically Correct response.

In looking back over that thread, it was easy to see who was giving honest, heart felt answers, and who was spewing the socially correct tripe. All the heartfelt answers were unsettling, and hopeful. In their prickly syllables, I found strength to keep to my goals.

I wouldn’t want a socially/politically correct life. That’s not living, that’s being a drone in a hive. Mindless. I like my unsettling, disturbing, emotional, seething, loving life. I know I’m being contradictory here. Here I am, delighting in a life that I have made a tentative schedule to depart.

And smiling.

Make of that, what you may.