Have you ever wanted to kill someone? Or just said it in passing as an expression of great distaste toward someone who is being distasteful. I think...of death maybe just a bit too much. Partially due to crippling mental illness but mostly in part to my fascination with the idea that one of my favorite, and ashamedly recently deceased, authors Terry Pratchett once wrote
"Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.” 588Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkd2AKH5iRj
― Terry Pratchett, The Color of Magic
I loved the idea, being a pirate and never dying, simply because I refused to. But the thought of ending a life entirely, as thoughts of such nature drift through my broken mind in the form of what my doctor calls "Obsessive Thoughts", scares me. "That's a whole life! A whole being with the same influence and potential to do terrible and great things as anyone else in the world. It's the lack of opportunity and circumstance or proximity that prevent them from greatness whether it be demonization or sainthood."
And then I think of, as my friend Tyler put it, "Offing myself". When I mentioned suicide to him in a casual conversation he used this phrase and we have thus never returned to the subject under my advisement.
So I think about death a lot. My own, others, but also in philosophical senses as well. I find myself drawn to the idea of nothing, in a positive way mind you. I like nothing, nothing pleases me, a lot more than the ants, sand, static, and maggots that cloud my brain with anxiety and thoughts of slitting my wrists or taking the knife and burying it into the heart of a loved one and twisting without remorse. So I fancy the idea of being a Buddhist, but never calling myself one because westerners who call themselves buddhists must be fooling themselves by reading theological writings by Episcopals or even the right kind of Methodists and deciding that God must work through them so they can attain enlightenment in the form of unlocking the other secret 85% of their brain and learning to levitate like all those guru's on television.
But I like the idea of nothing, and meditation and finding my mind quieted and my suffering lessened by the breath and the wind and the lack of images blood and flayed skin in my mind. Just nothing, and breath, and the cool late summer breeze off the water.
I don't want to die, but if I were to die, I wouldn't want to be judged afterward by a man in white robes and a long white beard. Santa already does that for me around Christmas time and I don't want to be on the "Naughty" list for al eternity after I die. I also don't want clouds everywhere, those things are bothersome, and another transcendental Earth seems rather dull, even if there was everything the book of revelations promises, IE multi eyes beasts and the lot, I still don't think I, or my soul or consciousness, would be pleased to have been judged and found worthy of this particular country club.
I'll leave with this...I'm broken, we're all broken, and death is a great equalizer, unless we are judged, then I don't know...I have know Idea...
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