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A thousand small suicides

Trauma leaves a mark, which “sounds” emotionally like a car alarm that never shuts up, and “looks”, emotionally, like a light which won’t stop blinking.

This becomes a part of what you call “life”.  It is what life IS, to you. And contemplating the notion that it will ALWAYS be like this is what leads, I think, to self destructive behaviors, to addictions of all sorts.  It’s not just that it bothers you now, but that it may bother you forever.  And much of this happens at a preconscious or unconscious level.  You may not know why you are wild and reckless, but some part of it is likely just wanting the fucking thing to STOP.

Kurt Vonnegut called smoking a socially acceptable form of suicide.  But it is a slow suicide, not an honest suicide, but it is still trending in that direction.  You are feeding the part of you that wants to die, because life is painful.

Many who live choose the path of death early on. They don’t do it consciously, but there is some part of them which is always tearing things down and tearing them up, which is relentless in its own domain.

To want to live is to feel affection for life, for yourself, and for everyone else.  This is the natural goodness Peter Levine talks about.  I am getting occasional whiffs of it.