It’s never the chronic pain that gets me. I still feel like that could get better someday. It’s not autism either. Not the agoraphobia. Not being nonbinary. Not climate change. It’s usually been unemployment and being held in the jaws of capitalism that makes me want to die. But now I have a job; for the first time, my life seemed like it’d work out. I can just barely afford everything I need and some of what I want. I have things I love doing and I can imagine being successful and accomplished at those pursuits and at my job. My health was even improving for a while. Things were about to be so good for the first time in my life.
But then my partner killed himself.
Now I’m alone, and even though I know that if I live my life will probably get better—almost certainly better than it is right now—I know that it’ll only improve because I’ll forget. Every day I live beyond this is another day that will be erased from our time together. Will I ever find someone who will love me as much as he did? No; because he only loved me that much because he hated himself and needed someone selfish to pour himself into. I didn’t deserve that much love. We made each other happy for years and years, but he didn’t deserve to be with someone so cold…though I didn’t deserve to be with someone so broken.
I know he would want me to be happy more than anything. But I’m vengeful, and I don’t want to. I do believe that I can live without him, but only because it’s so hard to die. I do believe that I could be happy without him someday. I even think I could keep him alive in my head, having known him well enough to know what he’d say to just about anything. My atheist brain is warping to let some magic in because grief without a little magic is impossible. But I don’t want to live without him, and I don’t want to be happy without him, and I don’t want to see how well the rest of my life might turn out. It’s like when I used to play video games and I would give up and do something else near the end because I knew how the rest of it would play out. I know the broad strokes of what’s in store for the rest of my life, and I’m just not interested.
On the worst days, like today, I can’t decide whether to tell one of the very, very few people who still cares about me. Because if they know how bad this, how much I’m writhing in this pain, they might try to keep me alive, and I want to keep my options open. But worse, they may do nothing at all, and then I’ll be even more alone, which hardly seems possible, and I want to die because it’s the right time to die, not because someone said the wrong thing on a bad day. Sometimes I feel violently suicidal and other times I just feel fatally disenchanted with life. But on even the best days since his death, I don’t care if things ever get better. I’m not interested in this world anymore.
2 comments
My deepest condolences for the loss of your partner. My heart aches that you experienced such a thing and I congratulate you for holding on still; you say that death is difficult but nonetheless it takes strength to keep going. I empathize with you on terms of that as well – time might “heal” the wound, but sometimes we do not want to forget things, or to feel less intensely about them – we do not want to heal. The suffering is horrendous but what brings it is a love we are not sure we want to feel less of, if I understand you correctly.
Likely I cannot say anything that will make this any easier on you, but please don’t blame yourself for anything. We are all selfish, it is a curse brought by the virtue of being human. This doesn’t render the love you shared any less blessed. He was warmed by your love though you view yourself as cold. Regardless of everything the love perseveres past the pain. I wish you the very best.
it’s a struggle, the one about telling people.
you want to share this deep part of yourself,
but people easily freak. you don’t want that.
you just want to share how shitty you feel.
we do that here, guess it’s why we are here.
if anyone in my life knew how low … there
would be freaking. or disbelief. as you say, what if
they do nothing at all? when i share a blip, people
don’t really believe me.
i have decades of being a tight and together POS,
really capable and strong and full of life.
others can’t handle when we change.
in your case, anything you share should be embraced
and deeply honored by others. you’ve been through
the top stressor in life. may you find comfort this
side of the abyss. wishing you warmth and light.