My mother attempted suicide multiple times. There is no exact count. She began showing off her scars to me when I was maybe 8 years old and continued to find herself in rehab programs long after I was on my own. It was such a repetitive cycle that it seemed less like a "cry for help" and more like a hobby.
Then I found the "Oh just give up" voice in myself. As life tends to do, it pushed me to the brink of myself. Sexual assault sent me into a serious decline and at that point in my life I found myself at a place where ending it seemed like the only solution to the despair. For the record, I never attempted. I did however turn the idea over in my hand like a shiny sharp object that vibrated with a power that scared the hello out of me. Instead I committed myself to as many healing activities as I could find...using everything that came my way as a lifeline to a place of light again.
It was at this time, in the muckiest, muck of myself that my mother made another of her attempts. I brought myself to the conversation begrudgingly. Putting myself in the motherly role I listened to her story once again and an anger bubbled up in me from so deep I thought I was going to vomit into the telephone.
Who the hell was she to try this again? What the hell does she have to be so tragic about? And why the flicking flack is she using me to get herself through this when I could not do the same with her? Irritated, but with a drive to be the good kid, I told her that death is not an option and that if I don't get to end it neither does she. She found inspiration in this, I slept for something like 3 days.
What I learned from this, is probably something many people already know. It is what really really sunk in for me:
Life is a choice. Since I have the cognitive awareness to understand that at some point I will no longer be bouncing along the universe on this firery ball called Earth, and since I understand that certain actions I take could make that end come sooner, then I have a choice. The choice to live or to die, the choice to thrive or to decline, the choice to grow into something more or to wither into something less.
And I realized that my choice was made a long time before my dark night of the soul descended upon me. For that I am grateful. For my mother I am also grateful, from her tragedy and despair came many a great gift, the most of exciting of which currently is my drive to be a balanced beautiful and loving momma.
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