For my death you shall need popcorn
Feeling sad sucks. As you listen to indulgently sad music and imagine yourself as the protagonist in a dramatic movie. You hold your head in your hands while you’re crying and think “I can’t even believe how sad this whole situation is. I think if I was in a movie I could bring an entire movie theater to tears right now.”
As I walked along, kicking stones and feeling sorry for myself I considered this must be that feeling deeply depressed people get. Geez, I never imagined it would feel this bad. It’s down right horrible. Hopeless, confused, painful, totally alone and doing all you can to hold your grip on life.
Sinking into my feelings, I considered how people get to this place and how the feeling of ending one’s life can seem like a viable solution. It would be a way out of all these problems, the ultimate release.
What would that look like for me, I thought.
Well it would have to be something creative—cause that’s the artist in me. It would have to be super gutsy—cause that’s the athlete in me, and it would have to be fun—cause I always want fun.
Okay, I got it. I would ride my bike to the top of the Chief, launch myself off a huge kicker and do a double back flip off the highest peak and into my afterlife. —there is an afterlife, right??
Now that I have an exit strategy, I can go back to waiting for the sadness to stop.
It suddenly dawned on me, even when I was feeling lower than low, I could make a decision on how I would die. This opened me up to new possibilities about the way I could potentially think and feel. My turning point hinged upon the idea that if I was considering an epic guns a blazing way out, I must still have some courage and life in me.
Don’t quit, this isn’t the endo
We all have things that we care passionately about and affect us deeply. While our individual situations and circumstances can be vastly different, feelings feel the same. The feeling of loss, embarrassment, shame, rejection, heartbreak are the same.
It is in our nature to hyper-focus on these feelings and our situations. When we do this we lose perspective and forget that we have choices, we do. You are going to feel shitty for a while, it’s true. You can’t hurry through grief. What you can do is not fight the feelings, instead choose to be the observer of your feelings and thoughts. And sometimes you’ll see a glimmer of zest, when you do, hold on tight and follow THAT.
“When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt
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