If you were programmed from birth to know that at any age, you’d be given one opportunity to look thru a portal into the future and see the time, place, and cause of your own death, would you look?
Would you want to know?
How would this knowing affect your choices throughout your life?
Would the age you are, at the time of looking thru the portal play into your decision making going forward? & if so, how?
What if we, in America, had access to assisted suicide, like they do in other parts of the world?
When you’re ready, in certain parts of the world you can sign your own life away and go peacefully, with dignity, in your sleep.
(This is most common among the elderly and terminally ill).
If fact, some Americans will fly themselves to one of these countries where assisted suicide is available, with the thought of alleviating their families the burden of caring for them until they pass naturally.
Some do it to avoid the pain of a progressing terminal illness such as cancer.
Some are just ready to go.
My grandmother, 94, though mentally sharp, talks often of suicide and how she’s ready to go.
Hearing her verbalize how much she wants to die absolutely breaks me.
But on the other hand, the thought of it being her choice is the slightest bit comforting.
Unfortunately, we live in America, and if she’s anything like her mother, my great grandmother, she will simply stop eating and go when she pleases regardless.

In recent weeks, I’ve been struggling a lot.
I’d tried to get into therapy, only to be ghosted or turned away.
Anything I had to look forward to this year, has been ripped from me.
Any shred of stability and security in my present and future, gone.
I’ve been gaslit, betrayed, lied to, taken for a fool so many times.

I can’t say I’m not used to a life of 89% negative, 11% positive.. most of my life has been pretty hard and most of the troubles I’ve endured, I’ve endured alone.
When asked, I shrug and try to convince myself I’ve been thru worse, I’ll get thru this season too.
When alone, I cry, I ask God what his reason for putting me here is.
I ask God why he continues to give me shreds of happiness only to rip them away later.
I ask myself, how can I make this better? How can I parent myself thru this?

After 32 years of the same cycle, I’m tired.
I’m tired of putting trust into people who fool me into thinking they deserve it.
I’m tired of working so hard to give myself and those around me a great life, but still feeling like I’m not doing enough.
I’m tired of forcing myself to go on social media to seem half relevant, when all it does is force comparisons and amplify insecurities like how I have to have a “niche” otherwise no one will like me.
I’m tired of basically begging people to want to hang out with me.
I’m tired of wondering if I’m the problem.
I’m tired of other people preying upon my struggles when all I ever did was try my best.
I’m tired of people being more enthusiastic about someone’s life falling apart instead of helping them pick up the pieces. (Let’s go to court about it! I’m willing to bet you’re reading this too. Put it in your motion. ;-*)
SORRY, OFF TOPIC.
I’m tired of wondering what the fuck I’m doing here.
Sometimes, I think I’m low-key tired of being here in general.

I’ve been hyper-aware of death since I was very young.
Adults who were around me often, like my parents and teachers, would always joke about how “serious” I was.
For a kid, I didn’t smile often, I didn’t have a lot of friends, my mom kept me rather isolated for as long as she could.
I’m an only child, my house was extremely toxic and unstable during my entire childhood.
I had no way of understanding anything that was going on around me, I had no one to just give me a fucking hug.
I had a lot of time to think. Let my weird confusing thoughts pour in and try to understand them.
One of my earliest memories of understanding my own mortality was after school, watching Dragon Tales.
I remember like it was yesterday, laying in the living room of my childhood home.
Dragon Tales went to commercial break and out of nowhere this thought popped into my head.
“If I die today, this show will still be on tomorrow.”
Which snowballed into, “If I die today, the sun will still rise tomorrow. My family will still be here but I won’t.”
Then I imagined myself disappearing, & what that exact moment would look like if I wasn’t there.
My conclusion was, the t.v. wouldn’t be on. That was it. That was the big difference in me being here vs. me not being here at age 6.
So in my very under-developed brain, I knew the world would be no different if I wasn’t here.
No one would notice.
I remember being sad when I realized these things, but I was always sad so no one saw a difference in my behavior.
Why would a 6 year old think like that?
Where did that thought even come from?
Did I really think my parent’s lives would be better or easier if I was somehow not here anymore?
That they wouldn’t even notice my absence?
I still don’t have an answer, but dissecting that as an adult is rough.

Another weird memory I have is from an even younger age,
I was in the backseat of my mom’s run down old chevy and as we’re driving underneath an overpass, a thought popped into my head.
“You’re different from other kids, you’re not the same.”
To this day, I don’t know what this thought was trying to tell me.
Am I gonna die super early?
Am I gonna know more than I should?
Is my life going to be a good one?
I was 4.

So understanding death happened early for me.
But this sparked another question in my mind.
What if at some point in our lives, we were able to quickly glimpse into the future and see how our lives will end.
Would we do it?
I’m sure some of us would, and I’m sure some of us wouldn’t.
After all, we are not meant to know how we are going to die.
We are not meant to know a lot of what we now know.
But on the other hand, what if the ability to see how much time we have on earth forced us to make the absolute most out of that time?
What if instead of going thru the motions day by day, we chose to wake up and squeeze as much enjoyment out of today as we possibly could?
Or perhaps you look thru the portal and see yourself terminally ill with lung cancer in the future, maybe you’d chose to never pick up a vape or a cigarette in your life.
This could go in so many directions depending on what each individual decided to do with this information.
Right now, the only people who somewhat know when they’re going to die are the terminally ill.
& unfortunately once given that diagnosis, most are too weak or emotionally distraught to go and enjoy their last months weeks or days.
Maybe if we could see and eliminate bad habits before they start, we could prevent disease and perhaps prevent our own untimely death; change the trajectory of our entire lives if we choose to look thru the portal early enough.
This theory wouldn’t stand up in the case of genetic/predisposed illness, etc.
However, looking thru the portal might give us insight on how to manage the hand we’re dealt, regardless of circumstance.

If I got to choose, I would look.
I would choose to look at age 18, to allow myself a childhood free of worry but to also allow, in theory, enough time to change the course of my life if what I saw in the portal was me running myself into the ground.
I’d definitely have a lot more clarity than I do right now.
Every time I think I’m on the right path, turns out I’m a fool and I have to turn around and start on a new path once again.

There has to be a reason I keep ending up here, it’s just blurry right now.
I’m trying to listen to my heart & soul, and they’re telling me to eject myself from this current reality for a while.
They’re telling me I need to take a leap.
Embark on a journey that will serve as the catalyst for expansion within myself.
Sometimes the answers to our questions only become clear when we are outside of our situation looking in.
When we see the sky from a new part of the world.
When we taste food from a place we’ve never been before.
When we test our brain to speak our native language as we go back to the land where our ancestors grew up.
Though it’s weighing on me in many aspects,
I’ve been planning a trip.
A trip far away where I will absorb the history of my family, get lost, find myself, and get lost again.
This trip will be enlightening, scary, and telling of my character and who I’ve made myself to be.
No, it is absolutely not a suicide mission… just wanted to be super clear on that.
I don’t know what’s coming next, and maybe that’s a good thing right now.
Maybe I’ll flee the country and never come back. Start again where my grandmother started.
Maybe I’ll find the beauty I used to see in everything, and let it wrap its arms around me again.
Hopefully, at least, I’ll find things out about myself that I wouldn’t have found out otherwise.

Maybe I’m just supposed to float right now.
Lay on my back instead of trying to tread water for another 32 years.

In the words of the great Bob Marley,
“Not living good, travel wide”