More than Survive

When you're in survival mode, you don't allow yourself the space to breathe and be. You are just doing what absolutely needs to be done. You are trying to not drown. You aren't aware of anyone or anything around you. You aren't aware of your actual breath either. Because you are hyper focused on survival. Although you may not be aware that what you're dealing with is akin to being alone in the middle of nowhere not knowing when you will eat or drink next, to your subscious it is that life or death. Nothing matters except your own survival.

I lived many years in survival mode without even realizing it. Because I had spent my entire childhood and teen years in survival mode too. It was all I knew. How could I know there was any other way to live? 

It became incredibly miserable and exhausting. I felt like I couldn't live indefinitely that way. It is no wonder to me that I dealt with intense suicidality and depression for years and years. How could I not??

A few days ago, I had a headache. I didn't really care because it was slight, and I didn't have plans. Around dinner, it seemed to become a migraine. I felt nauseous and didn't want to see or listen to anything. I tried to fall asleep, but I couldn't. (I have only had a few migraines in my lifetime, for which I am grateful it hasn't been more. Usually when I get them I go to sleep, and then I'm fine again once I wake up.) I was annoyed that I couldn't sleep, but I kept trying to relax because any tension made it worse. So I tried not to fight being awake, although I just wished I could be asleep.

My eyes were closed, and my thoughts were suicidal. I wanted to die. I thought about my current life - jobless, living with my parents (in a less than ideal physical environment), alone (or so it felt/can feel like it). I don't need to write a book, or blog, or help anyone, or share anything or do anything. I can die now. Nothing matters. It's all pointless. We are all going to die anyway.

What a sudden and fierce spiral! All beginning with a migraine and not being able to sleep. Two times I got up and threw up. After that, I did eventually fall asleep. But even after throwing up, I really would have be more than okay not waking up the next morning. However, I haven't ever heard of anyone dying from a migraine.

I woke up the next morning grateful to feel fine, though I remembered feeling suicidal and that this life is pointless. I no longer felt like I wanted to die, but that question still haunted me. It seems like I can and have overcome many things, but I inevitably always come back to, what is the point? And once I ask that question, it is hard to talk myself off of a cliff.

I let the question fade out and focused on how I would spend my day. I gave myself space and time. To breathe, to feel, to be. For most of my life, I didn't know I needed space and time nor did I know what that meant or what it looked like. But most of my life, I was living in survival mode. I don't live there anymore.

And because I am not merely surviving, I have more bandwidth. It is one reason I can live with my parents and do more than survive them.