To God
I want to start by saying, there are no flaws in your design, only a couple of defects I found along the way and brought into mine, I will not blame you for the time I almost took my own life…your life.. the life…and it was times. It was times, I can’t say I would apologise….I hope you understand, I had completely lost my way. On some sort of road now, with things beyond my negative short sight to keep me motivated to want to live.
I seem to talk to you often in prayer, I say things, like protect me and give my family and I health and bless us, I don’t forget to ask you to forgive, I remember at the end to say thanks. I have one prayer, it began as sincere and then I realised it covered everything I wanted to say, it was my ‘our father’, my ‘hail Mary’, I said it so often I knew it by heart. Sometimes, when I felt obliged, I’d add something, not routine, I began selecting the days I would pray. The day I felt my prayers would never reach you because my hands were bleeding and my blades were used, I didn’t pray, I didn’t think anyone should hear me. The days I was doped up on medications, I wouldn’t pray, I didn’t understand how you still let me live everyday. I would wake up the next, and thank you for my life, I hated it, but I wanted to die on my terms, I wanted to choose. I never got the chance.
You may ask me why, why I turned so far away from who I was 5 years ago, the truth is, my faith in religion is somewhat shaky, I don’t mean my faith in you, I absolutely believe you are. The irony of me justifying to you that I believe you exist, but the truth is to some, you’ve become a myth of legends. My faith faltered, my faith in organised prayer, and some aspects of religion that confuse me and I am told not to question. I grew tired of being told, don’t question God. I wasn’t questioning you, I was questioning how we choose to worship you. Independent non conformist monotheist…that’s the word I found when I searched for ‘someone who believes in one God, but not in religious institutions’. We are a peculiar race, us humans.
So I stopped, praying, and searching for answers. I guess the happenings of the day, depending, also had a hold on how I felt. Being diagnosed with severe clinical depression was a relief. You know this. I was ecstatic. Now, I told myself, I could justify hating myself, not caring about most, the feelings of a lack of gratitude, I wasn’t spoilt, or spiteful, I was sick. Somehow, sick can justify it. Sick can also mean counselling sessions, and filing in suicide scale questionnaires…I lied on them, my mother would see them, and I didn’t want her to believe I was hopeless, that would be one more person, I didn’t want her to feel like she made a mistake, that I was her mistake. It wasn’t an outright lie, it was me saying, ‘suicidal tendencies’ instead of ‘suicidal needs’.
Here I am talking to you about taking the life you gave me, I’m telling a story to you like it’s a fairytale, yet I’ve been told you’ll never forgive me for taking this life. I don’t think it’s mine… It’s on loan I believe, like a trial run, if my life was a car, there’s no possible way to equate the two, but if it was, it would have been unworthy of being on the road for years. And would currently be in the shop with massive damage to my self worth. I guess right now, I’m trying to customise it, give it a colour that I like, so that my outlook on life isn’t a dark cloud that follows me around, I’m trying to add durable wheels, I know the road ahead won’t be easy and I have no idea what it will look like, I’m trying to add car locks and tinted windows, so that I don’t just pick any person I think to be interesting, you know I have the habit. I’m trying to elevate my clearance, I will assume some bumps will come around, I can’t plan for everything, but I can fortify my fragile mind.
I’m telling you things you already know, omnipresence has it’s perks, but I tell you still, because you’re the only one who fully understands, my intention and my actions, and although I’ve heard hell is filled with people of good intention, I’d like to believe you understand I’m just stumbling around trying to find solid ground beneath me.
