Why do we stay alive?
If I don't want to die, but I don't want to live, what do I want?
Lately I have been thinking about suicide a lot.
Not about committing it—just about it.
I feel immense pressure to make something of my life. To have purpose. Meaning. Not just for others, but for myself. Because without it, what am I doing here?
This morning was the first frost on Mull. I’m staying in a small cottage on an island in Scotland, a choice I made either to sickly test my ability to manage isolation or because my gut knew there was something I’d need to learn in the loneliness.
I had a doctor’s appointment this morning (bless healthcare in the UK), and the closest town is 45 minutes away. Most of me wanted to cancel, but a small part of me wanted to keep this commitment to myself despite the urge to sleep all day.
On the drive to town, I started sobbing. When I start sobbing out of nowhere, I usually also start yelling.
Yell-crying, as I’ve called it, is how I find out what’s really going on. It’s how I force myself to let it out instead of shove it down. It’s how I move through whatever is trying to move me.
“I am tired of starting over and over and over! I’m so afraid of commitment! I’m so afraid of committing to the wrong thing! I’m terrified I’ll commit to something and wake up one day and realize it was the wrong thing! I’m terrified all the time!”
Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep starting over? What do I think will happen? What miracle am I waiting for?
I’ve wanted to end my life too many times. And I’ve heard many of you tell me the same.
As I wrote in Where the River Flows, sometimes it’s not so much that I get to a place where I’m trying not to kill myself, it’s that I get to a place where I’m trying to stay alive. A place where life isn’t something I’m excited about—it’s a chore. Another thing on my to-do list. Just get to the end of the day.
The existentialist in me is at her all-time best in these times. She gets to ask the nihilistic questions like, “what are we really doing all this for?” and, “were we really born to work and then die?” and, “certainly this way of living can’t be the reason we exist.”
Certainly, there must be something more. Because if there’s not, this whole living thing is really a waste of my time.
How do I make sense of a world that I did not ask to be born into? How do I make enough meaning somewhere so that I do what I have to in order to eat, pay bills, and engage in activities that I actually care about? And how do I find out what I care about?
Existential me is frustratingly inquisitive. She asks all the hard questions and I have none of the right answers.
But I try.
After yell-crying, I responded to myself. (Yes, I talk to myself, it’s a skill I learned in therapy and I highly recommend self-talk either outloud, in a journal, or in your head. It’s a wildly wonderful way to learn how wise and well you really are in some pretty shit times).
Good thing the roads are empty here and only sheep could see me yapping away to myself in my car.
“Rach, I know you want life to feel good. You want joy and excitement and you don’t want to miss a thing. And sometimes your fear of missing something leads you to dive so deep into the pleasure that the universe has no choice but to show you the opposite.
“Equilibrium is the name of the game, and when you ride a high high, you’re going to fall a low low. Maybe the middle isn’t about finding both the highs and the lows. Maybe it’s about staying in the middle where it’s mundane. Where it’s not so high but also not so low. Maybe the more you stay present, pay attention to what you have instead of what you don’t, and accept what is, the more you’ll actually feel good.”
Maybe the name of the game isn’t asking why am I here and what’s the point. Maybe the name of the game isn’t asking at all. Maybe the name of the game is sitting in wonder, looking with curiosity, and thinking, “huh, isn’t this an interesting thing I’m doing here—this living thing.”
Because if it really doesn’t matter, if it’s as nihalistic as I sometimes find it, then it perhaps the weight I place on my shoulders to make it mean something is just as cruel as the weight of all the stuff I think doesn’t matter.
Pressure, I’m learning, is only applied in fear.
We don’t apply pressure on others when we trust them.
We don’t apply pressure on others when we have faith in an outcome.
We don’t apply pressure on ourselves when we aren’t concerned with letting others down.
We don’t apply pressure on ourselves when we feel confident in our abilities.
We apply pressure when we are scared, mistrustful, or insecure.
Pressure grows from fear.
So how do we relieve it?
Relieving Pressure is Like Letting Go
I’m learning that pressure is like holding on. It’s like a leech that wants to live on and suck from my bodily fluids.
Gross. Nobody likes a leech.
Yet we leech ourselves all the time. Work-leech. Love-leech. Body-leech. It’s like a leechathon and we’re all racing to see who can be the suckiest sucker.
Just like grief or old selves or anything we try to let go of, pressure isn’t something we can physically remove or just cross our fingers will disappear.
Pressure has to be released. Relaxed. Consciously and intentionally surrendered. Relieving pressure means checking in with our internal thought processes, noticing what demands we place on ourselves, and lowering expectations so we can stop setting ourselves up for disappointment.
Relieving pressure means reminding oursleves daily that we appreciate and respect our (and others) existence not for their performance or perfection but existence.
Oh, I just thought. It’s not really that I need a bigger or better why for living. It’s that I need a more reasonable expectation for living.
I’m going to *try* to apply less pressure. To try to relieve the existing pressure. And my hope is that maybe, why I stay alive won’t really be a question I have to ask anymore, because my definition of a worthwhile life won’t be so goddamn unreasonable.
Maybe.