It’s about so much more than causing words to coordinate…compliment…and cohesively tell my story. This isn’t a hobby for me. This is the food I eat, more significant than the air that I breathe because when I didn’t want to live anymore, I used language as a life raft. The more I bled on paper, the less I wanted to shed my own.
I tend to write in a satirical tone, intended to make you chuckle or cause the corners of your eyes to crease when clever ideas flirt with your imagination. I try to reach you on a level that keeps you comfortable and protects my privacy. But beneath the relativity and humor, there is pain from my past…pain that boils like Ramen noodles in a college dormitory.
This life isn’t what they said it would be. Opportunity isn’t knocking or calling or chasing me. Whatever “big breaks” I get, I have to sweat for. For my generation, opportunity is barely a distant light in the darkest night. We’re all just trying to make it, gracefully. I can admit that I think more about who I have yet to become, than I do about who I already am. I’ve never been one to enjoy my accomplishments for too long. I look at my achievements like a child does a present the day after Christmas. I’m impressed for a few minutes, but then my senses grow restless and I need more. I need something new.
When I was a sophomore in college, I was convinced that I hadn’t accomplished enough. When I looked at my life, I didn’t think that I had contributed enough to society or saved enough lives or told enough people about Jesus. I sincerely thought that my life wasn’t really worth living. My joy left late one night, while I was living in Collegiate Courtyard, and it didn’t return for 5 years. There is so much that a young person faces once he or she leaves the nest…so much that wasn’t covered in AP English or AP European History. No one makes it clear that a break up can literally break a heart, stop its beat, or slow its pace. No one warns you about the professors that are blatantly and shamelessly racist. No one tells you that the Office of Admissions doesn’t really want black students at the University…but quotas must be filled. So, when you’ve grown up in the suburbs, protected by God and family, and then get exposed to a world where the strong barely survive…every day becomes its own battlefield.
I considered suicide because I thought God had given up on me. I considered suicide because family stopped calling me. I considered suicide because I thought I’d never be good enough for anyone to love for a lifetime…
But what I’m most proud of, after 24 years of life, is that I considered suicide then opted to conquer my own demons by shedding light on my insecurities, my burdens, and my personal mistakes. I had to realize that my destiny is my own. Feeling alone is merely a consequence of failing to connect to those with similar tragedies. Having a purpose (and never abandoning that purpose) will keep you alive when nothing else will. I know now that I’m here to do something really special. College nearly killed me…but it didn’t. So I carry my story of triumph like a torch. It is my light when the electricity (motivation, vision, strength) in my life fails me. I want to live until there’s no power in these lungs to pump oxygen. I want to live until my eyes can no longer open to witness the sunset. I want to live until everyone I’ve ever loved is on the same bus that I’m taking to heaven’s gates.
Key phrase in today’s post: I want to live.
No comments:
Post a Comment