Tell Me Why It Matters

I cannot fall apart. We must stand as one to the world because it matters. I am trying to figure out what matters and why it matters.

I can definitively point to my children. When I ODed the last time, the time I nearly didn't make it, someone told me that if I committed suicide my children would never recover from it. My whole life I have been trying to find a way out that would not destroy the people I am trying to protect.

And I guess it doesn't matter that I want out. I guess it doesn't matter that I never wanted in, except perhaps InBetween, when I chose to return to this time and this life but I don't remember that. I guess that doesn't matter because now that I am here, I cannot speed up this incongruity of dying. I can't make it at my time or on my terms.

Because what matters is everyone else. As a child I did things to protect the people I love from myself and from others. As a teen, I lived because I didn't know a way out that wouldn't hurt my parents. As a mother (for the was no time in between being a teen and being a mother) I am duty-bound to protect my children from harm that I might cause them. Not by abusing them or destroying their bodies but by not putting them before all else.

Because protecting the ones I love is what matters.

It matters because I am the one who put them in the situation they are in - I made two people parents, I made many adults uncomfortable, I made four souls children. Protecting them MATTERS.

Along the way I have done a few other things, stumbled onto and through them. In the hospital after the OD, I talked at length with one of my suicide-watch sitters about her soul, her purpose, her God and her family. I helped her see that she could put herself exactly where she wanted to be. As a child, I kept someone else from getting hurt because I was there instead. Often I have been the shoulder upon which my mother has leaned and possibly the only reason she has to live, according to her words. I have created children that have touched the lives of others in many ways. I once wrote a story that made sense to a little girl I will never know. As a teenager, I kept 3 different people from killing themselves. I brought a feeling of unity to a group of kids that never quite had any label to wear at school. I showed a college girl why the man she thought she loved was not the man she thought he was.

I have made many small differences. Do they matter? Is that WHY protecting my loved ones matters - so that I can make many small differences? Do small differences matter to anyone besides the person altered? Do they need to?

There has to be a reason that my body repeatedly betrays my mind. This is most often heard from the weak, fragile or dying when their minds and souls are vibrant but their bodies are decaying. I am the opposite. I could have died a million times. I tried to die countless times and invite death consistently and my body always heals, never quits, never has the worst case scenario. I wish it would. Soon. NOW. But my body betrays my mind and I must protect my loved ones. Because that is what matters.

But, please, tell me WHY it matters. I will never be more than one of the million for the 1 in a million to exist. I don't want to be a placeholder. It doesn't feel like I matter. So why?

Tell me why it matters.

"You can't handle the truth!" (Jack Nicholson in "A Few Good Men")