Heavy thoughts

[icarus_chained]

First, a word of thanks to sablin27, who has repeatedly over the past while provoked and/or enticed me to think. I'm not sure if that was the intent, but thank you for it. *smiles*

This ... is something I've been wanting to put into words for a while, and on a prompt of death, survivors, integrity and the power of ideas, it seemed a good enough time to do so. Warnings for personal history, relatively frank discussion of depression, suicide and perhaps a skewed view of what makes life bearable. Heh.

Right. I am, at present, somewhere on the long haul up from my second major brush with depression in the last ten years. In fact, most of my teenage and adult life, what little of it there's been so far, has been pretty much a long cycle of severe depression and recovery from severe depression, just in time for a downswing back into, you guessed it, severe depression. Recently, I've been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, which may have had quite a lot to do with that. At the very least, it makes certain recurring thoughts during those episodes make sense. Heh.

When I say severe depression ... People say 'suicidal' like it's, I don't know, a throwaway term. Angsty teenagers looking for recognition or some such. People use it like a pejorative, to say someone is pathetic, weak, just wanting to be pampered, something. I don't know. I've heard any number of variations on the theme. You get a lot of that when you're the nutter in the class, and getting help for mental problems.

Suicidal means ... desperation. There's no word, no sequence of words, to adequately explain it. It means the things inside you, or around you, are so terrible, so desperately bad, that you will literally do anything to make it stop. In my case, it was mostly things inside myself, but that's not the case for everyone. It means thinking, honestly thinking, please, something, someone, make this stop. It means thinking, honestly thinking, that whatever death is, it can't be worse. Oblivion, at the very least, would make this stop.

I wanted to jump off things. The things clawing in my head, the rending ache of ... mostly fear. Mostly terror, and a profound conviction that I was not designed to exist in this world, that I was severely flawed, is such a way that my continuing to attempt to function in life would inevitably result in the continuation of pain. Life literally equated directly to pain and fear, and the thought of flinging myself into the sky, feeling that second's disconnect, that floating sensation where nothing mattered, would be worth whatever came afterwards. That moment's freedom, would be worth anything. Death was nothing to be feared.

I don't fear death. That's a thing many people say. I really don't. I fear pain. I am intimately aware of that terror. I fear being afraid, being trapped, being locked helpless someplace where there is nothing but fear and pain. That was one of the main reasons I never did jump. Fear that I would get it wrong, that I would survive, that I would end up locked in a shattered body and never know freedom again. I was afraid of that far, far more than I ever feared death. Death itself, as a concept, is one I regard more with curiosity than fear. And, for a long, long time, months and years at a time, one I regarded with a certain degree of longing.

So why not? Why not. You have to understand, it's been years. I've fought these thoughts for years, and years spent ... spent in terror, for reasons I still don't fully understand, though the Asperger's explains much. Years of fear, and the clawing things inside my head, and every day spent whispering please, please, make it stop, make it go away, please, stop. Years of sitting on bridges and stairwells and the upper floors of buildings, looking over the edge and wondering. Wanting that moment of disconnect, of freedom, and then ... whatever came afterwards. Years of depression so severe that I have actually lost close to two years of memory, wiped clean away so that I don't go back to that place. Years, of desperation, and yet ... yet I never jumped. Yet I never let go.

I admire survivors. You've no idea how much. These things, these fears and horrors, they came from inside me, from inside my own head, from my own flaws and weaknesses. These things are part of me. I don't know how many other people survive such flaws. I don't know how many other people survive other pains, other horrors, other fears, visited on them from outside. I don't know how many. But I admire every last one of them. I will always, always, admire the ability and will to survive.

But myself ... it wasn't so much will. *smiles crookedly* Not that strong. It was ... there was a wire, stretched across my heart, all those years. Narrowest of the narrow, and it cut, it tore, as much as any fear, that wire. It cut me apart. But it kept me alive. One narrow, unbreakable set of convictions, one slim line of control. And it wasn't strength. It wasn't ... wasn't courage or conviction or religion or friendship or caring or duty, or any of the myriad things it should have been. It wasn't strength.

It was adoration. *smiles wonkily* Mad, utterly mad, passionate adoration. It was wonder. Not joy, never that. It hurt. Every damn day. It still hurts, that narrow wire. Still tears me apart. But it kept me alive. Keeps me alive. Adoration. For the world.

Stupid. It sounds stupid, when you say it. But I just ... There have been moments. Even in the depths of pain. Moments where I look, and see, and feel, where the whole world turns inside my head, and I feel something click, and I understand something, and it's like touching the edge of something, feeling the edges of some vast, impossible thing, and ... And it's beautiful. It's unconscionably beautiful. The world, the universe, the way it works, the people in it. Nothing I understand, save in snatches at a time, but I don't have to, and I want to. It's ... it's ...

I have moments. Moments even in the middle of the terror, even clawing at my own head, at my own chest, even desperate for something, anything, to make it stop ... moments when I'm still so madly in love with the world. It's this big, mad, impossible thing inside my chest, this razored band around my heart, and every time I leaned over the edge, every time I yearned for that last moment of freedom ... the wire tightened, and I said 'no'. Just because ... because there's so much left to see. Because there's so much left to touch, and one day, one day, I might understand. Nothing else.

I'm not ... I really am not designed for this world. That was the thought then, and it's still the thought now. I am ... incredibly weak. I am ... incredibly scared. I may never understand, and don't seem to be in any way designed to fit it, and each successive phase of my adult life so far has been marked by a few years of grace followed by catastrophic break-down. I am so clearly, clearly not cut out for this living crap. I am not cut out for this world. Too weak by far. I will, quite possibly, never fit it. I will, quite possibly, never live a day of my life that is without some degree of pain or fear.

I will never fit this world. But I might see it. I might even, someday, in some moment of inspiration, understand, even just a little. This vast, mad, impossible thing that I can only barely touch. I might understand it. I might last, just that long. And I don't ...

It's so hard to explain. When I write, quite often, I write about beauty that is in some way terrible, about love that is in some way terrible. That's because it is, for me. Because love, wonder, beauty, wrapped a loop of wire around my heart and kept pulling me back, and back, and never let me go, and kept me in pain. Kept me in fear. Kept that line of control, that wire, and never let me go, no matter how terrible things got, how terrified I was, how much I clawed myself apart. Love kept me here. And not even love for a person. Not even a shared love. Instead, an utterly selfish love. Love for an idea, for a world, love that offered nothing save the adoration of some weak little girl who could do nothing about it.

But it kept me here. It has kept me here. It will, in all probability, continue to keep me here. I don't know how long. I don't know how far the wire may stretch, how much it can hold against. So far, it has held through a depression so profound that I literally carved away pieces of myself to survive it, wiped away whole years from my mind. So far, it has survived that. I've no idea what it will survive in the future. I've no idea how much of my weakness that wire may be expected to bear before it snaps, and sunders, and lets me go.

But for now, for now, it has. It will. For now, an idea has kept me alive. Even knowing what I know, how weak I am. Even feeling what I feel, how afraid.

I admire survivors, in a way that has utterly nothing to do with morality and just considerations. I will admire unashamed evil, if it should survive an adversity first. Though not condone it. Never that. But I will respect it. I once read a quote, somewhere, that "Beauty has no moral dimension". Neither, I think, does love. There is nothing, nothing in this world that is not wonderous, and nothing that is not terrible.

And, for now, nothing that is not worth surviving for. Nothing that is not worth that thin and cutting line of control.

I am ... not a stable person. *smiles faintly* This, you may have noticed. I am not a strong person. I am, perhaps, not a very nice person either. I am not a person designed for this world. This, all of this, everything I've said, means very little, perhaps nothing. I just ... wanted to explain the intensity of it. Of the fear, of the pain, of the wonder, of the adoration. I wanted to explain ... I don't know ... some fraction of what it's like, to survive that. Even if what you survive is purely the result of your own flaws, your own weaknesses. I wanted to explain ... why sometimes an idea is worth living for, worth surviving for. Why curiosity is, for me at least, as powerful a motivator as anything.

I wanted to explain why I admire them. All of them, everyone who has ever survived when they wanted, for a moment, for hours, for years, not to. Everyone who has ever lived, when for even a moment they wanted to die. Everyone who found something worth all that pain, whatever it might have been. Everyone who knows, bone-deep, what that pain is like, that you would do anything to escape it, and found a way to bear it regardless.

I admire the survivors. I may number among them only by some fluke of passion, that I should have a love, an idea, equal to pain, but I admire them regardless. All of them. Whatever their reasons, whatever their flaws. I admire them.

And I love them, too. However little that may be worth.

And for those who fell, those whose wires sundered and let them go ... in some ways, even still, I envy them. And in some ways, too, I adore them. Whoever they were, however they fell. I know some fraction of where they were. I hope, at the least, that death was indeed better, that there was some peace. I hope that.

*smiles sheepishly, shrugs* I just ... wanted to explain that. Forgive the more-than-a-little-crazed ramblings, yes? Forgive me.

*quiets*