Choosing Death

I choose death every day. I don't have to, but I succumb to it. I could choose life if I wanted, yet I trade down. I think it's because I don't hate death the way I should.

We go through life looking for greener grass, believing that the choice we have is life and better life. I think it's darker than that. We don't want to sit in the reality that we live in a world that isn't as it should be, so we pretend that it's really okay. In pretending that it's okay we don't properly long for it to be better; there are no birth pains. We live with a constant epidural. I guess longing and what we do with longing has been on my mind lately.

Every time I choke back desire I choose death. When I want to connect with someone and I pick up the TV remote instead of my cell phone, I choose death. When in my mind I spew out contempt towards the person I wanted to connect with, believing that they don't care about me, I choose death. When I spew hatred at myself, thinking I'm too much or not enough, I choose death again. Choosing death is choosing to shut down feeling alive, the kind of alive that it meant to remind us that better life is coming.

I have friends who are currently experiencing the hard sucker punches of life. They are lonely, they are scared, they worry, there's uncertainty, there's sorrow - everything in their circumstances screams at them to find a way to shut it all down. Like me, many of them do. Honestly, I'm not sure I want to enter into what they're feeling, because I might have to bear a taste of their agony. Maybe I can try to fix it for them, or give them words to placate and minimize their experience. Maybe I can just not even ask. I can choose death.

Or . . . I can get angry at the injustice, weep for the losses, long for the hideous pain of labor to be over.

If I choose life I will become acutely aware of my shortcomings, my weakness, my neediness. If I choose life I'll need a Savior.