Death

Death is a funny little bastard. Many people fear it and spend their whole life focused on avoiding it... and they never get to live, as they cannot escape their morbid obsession with their own oblivion. It is inevitable and often unpredictable and this truly can be frightening. You can say that you simply are not ready to die because you've just got so much left to do and accomplish and you just CAN'T die...

But, let's face it. I could drop dead in the middle of writing a single word and there would be nothing that I could do about it. I won't rise again on the third day and walk around until I ascend to heaven. That's just not going to happen to any of us.

No, we don't get to choose the last thing that we say to someone before we can no longer talk at all. We don't get to choose if we are going to live another day or not, at least not usually.

And this brings me to one of the worse ways to die. Suicide.

No, suicide isn't just when you shoot your brains out. It is so much more. It is a horrible and slow way to die, as you have lost any will to live days or weeks or months or years before you pull the trigger or pick up the knife.

It is a deterioration of the soul, a deep ditch of depression that you simply do not believe you can muster the strength to crawl out of.

It is when you simply have no other choice but to die and when death doesn't come on its own, you take your fate into your own hands.

I once knew a girl who often contemplated suicide. She cut into the soft flesh of her "fat" wrists as she tried to wash the pain of life away. I gave her every encouraging word that I could and listened to the personal hell she lived in, trying to understand how one young woman could take all of this stress and still have some sliver of life left in her... She went a week or two without cutting and suddenly it turned into months... She wore her scars proudly while I begged her to not add another. Thankfully, she has been feeling exponentially better but many people cannot say the same for themselves...

I know that there are countless ways to die. Many are painless, while others make you impatient for the event of your own death.

Any thing at all that lessens your will to live is horrible, whether it is severe bullying or a diagnosis of cancer. Death seems unfair no matter how you get there.

But, death itself is nothing to fear. It is an end to all pain.

No, it is wiser to fear anything that forces you to wish for death, anything that crushes your soul and destroys your spirits.

We are gifted with life, but it only becomes terrifying when you see it as nothing but a curse.