Dear Death

I feel you. I feel your presence the closest today than I have ever experienced you. You came barging on me like an overflowing floodgate of emotions and thoughts. Thoughts of ending this. Ending this cycle of thought that finally leads me to another door that welcomes me with open arms. I still feel you looming inside me, beside me, somewhere with me in this darkened room I’ve locked up from everyone else.

I am a few inches away from things that could physically end this existence. A little while ago you suggested that I was replaceable – that in a couple of years and probably a mere few days for people who I regard my closest friends I’ll be part of a dusting box in the corner of their memories and then I’ll be thrown out. I’ll be a mere topic of conversation, a mere topic of speculation of how they didn’t expect me to lose it and take my own life, to succumb to you, finally.

I forgot that by befriending you that I had allowed you to influence my own views on life and death and that a part of me – that is also a part of everyone else – would acknowledge and come into a peaceful agreement that “Yes. The World would be a better place without me.” Their lives would be a little less burdensome and they’d be free from the shackles that I might have created on their lives and I too, will be free from the shackles that I willingly allowed to put on myself and attached to them (unwillingly on their part).

But what hurts me is that no one seems to notice how sad I am today. How irrationally fast you came at the slightest of crack. It wasn’t even a full blown argument it was merely a statement made, a mere curious speculation, “You seem to keep locking doors accidentally. What could it possibly mean?” Just those words and you came swooping down from wherever you were hiding. I’m sorry for suddenly feeling repulsed by your presence. I said that I’d welcome you when you came but you came at an instance when I was too vulnerable. I wasn’t even prepared for my own vulnerability. And I know it makes sense to you. You’ve probably faced a lot of my kind, those who try to hold and embrace you but they later find that they didn’t grasp the extent of your existence.

I had this moment when I surrendered to your reasoning and I felt at peace with the fact that I was replaceable and that this would be my fate because no one seemed willing to stop me from digging deep into my own hole. No one in this house which I have called my home sensed anything wrong with me despite my locking this door. Maybe I expect too much from them. Maybe I was meant to be the sensitive me so I could sense their distress but it didn’t mean that they’d do the same. Is it right to say that they’re not that attached enough with me that they feel nothing intuitively of my dark demons…? Or are they overestimating my capacity to confront myself – that self?

I am self-preserving. This is my way of finding my light in this friendship between you and I. You aren’t done with me today right? I don’t feel you leaving yet. I still feel you here. I don’t think you are a figment of our imaginations. But it was my negligence for underestimating you and overestimating me. Maybe that’s why writers’ write, artists’ paint, dancers’ dance, singers’ sing and express themselves. Because through their expression we catch a glimpse of you. A propulsion so strong that life springs forth?

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