Time to sit with this pain, again

[Trigger warnings: grief; suicide]

One of my oldest and dearest friends, who has endured an awful amount of both physical and emotional pain, once stated that people take their own life when the pain (physical or emotional) becomes too intense to endure. 

That’s probably what brought us close at the beginning, when we met, two beautiful young girls modeling for a charity fashion show, three decades ago — that terrible, unbearable, existential pain that was deeper than what most of our teenage peers were feeling. 

Unfortunately, I haven’t “grown out” of that pain. Or maybe, life has provided me with plenty new reasons to feel unbearable emotional pain. 

“I want to die — please, let me die in my sleep tonight and not wake up again tomorrow morning”. Once again those words in my head, as the pain, too intense, too sharp, too deep, keeps me from falling asleep. 

For the past couple weeks, I have been eschewing the pain, keeping myself so busy that I simply couldn’t think of it much — I mean, I still did feel it now and then, but it was manageable because I was burrying it under “safety layers of busyness”. Keeping my mind engaged elsewhere, staying in my body and out in “society” or forcing my head to think of all the things I “needed” to do. 

But you cannot bury grief forever. It will come back and bite you in the butt. It will come back, it will resurface and claim all your attention, all your energy — mental, emotional, physical. The pain will come knocking at your door and claim its time, make claims on your time, on your energy. It will not simply request, it will require and enforce that you give it your full attention. It will force you to look the truth straight in the eye and deal with it. 

At least, that’s how it is for people like me who cannot live lying to themselves (or others). I cannot lie my way out of this pain. I cannot run my way out of this pain, as much as I would like to and keep trying to. 

Today, this weekend, maybe the entire upcoming week or month or however long it takes, I’m going to have to sit with this pain. Take it on a gentle hike on one of my beloved trails that I want to reclaim for myself. Let it overwhelm me, if it must. Let myself cry, if I can. Sit. Sit alone. 

Sit alone, because there’s no one but me who can sit with me, no one but me who’ll have to live (or die) with this pain.