6 years, 2190 days, 52,560 hours.
That’s the amount of time that has passed since March 28th, 2018, sometime in the mid-afternoon.
As many of you now know I was highly suicidal then. That afternoon my life changed.
I found a “therapist” via a google search that proposed something different Contextual-Conceptual Therapy (suicidetherapy.com). And I reached out for help.
I can never quite put it in words, because words don’t always convey what we experience fully.
If I try to use words, it is like this. The last 2190 days have been wonderous, beautiful, sad, joyful, rapturous, centered, grounded, scary, full of gratitude and calm.
I remember walking into F’s office that day and on a large piece of poster board resting against the wall was this quote.
“There is another world, and it is this one.”
― Paul Éluard
I remember reading those words and wondering “what am I not seeing?”.
Sometimes we can’t see what is right in front of us. The stories we tell ourselves create a certain sort of veil before our eyes that limits our perception.
But the thing is we can’t know what we aren’t seeing. How do you see something that you are blind to?
The stories I had been telling myself about who I was and why I was like that were written in bold capital letters across the landscape of my mind.
Looking back, I can now see that what I was experiencing was an inside job, something I was doing to myself for 48 years. The same stories repeated over and over and over and over. Imprinted on my mind, blurring my vision, causing me to be something I was not, I was an illusion, a ghost.
Since that fateful day I have had 52,560 hours of being different. Maybe not so much different, but I am, now who I am.
I have experienced things that had I followed through with my plans of suicide, would have never come to be.
- I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to travel halfway around the globe to attend my oldest son’s wedding.
- I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to live where I now do, on an island in the middle of a forest surrounded by nature.
- I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to adopt an elderly dog who is now my constant companion and friend.
- I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to reconnect with some of my oldest friends.
- I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to tell my family and friends that I love them.
All of that would have never happened for me.
Thank you all for being part of my life.
Life is beautiful. If you are struggling reach out for help.
I Love You All.
K