I must have stepped on some ginormous universal toe because the past 2 days have come right out of Hell Catalog. And it was right in the middle of this hell that I realized I don’t really want to die.
Whenever I get frustrated -which is every day lately- I say “Oh! I wish I was dead”. True! I sometimes want to not exist. But I don’t want to go through the experience of ending. As if I wish I could just vanish. Never having existed. Again, lazy. Tonight, I faced what could potentially kill me and I realized that's not really what I meant!
I was driving in the middle of nowhere in the dark with the golden white moon as big as a tree on my right, which meant frosty road. All that stood between me and the black freezing lake on the left were some lousy timber posts, 2 stretched cables and the yellow frost bitten grass. At every sharp bend I thought “This is not how I want to die! not in complete darkness on a road with no reception and no cars ahead or behind for kilometers, not sinking into a black lake." I drove through sleepy small towns; white mist floating over the roofs and wrapped around street lamps like a curse. I wondered if anyone heard if I cried. My only meal of the past 14 hours was a half eaten protein bar on the passenger seat that tasted foul. I hadn't even finished the report, or got M a birthday card or told him I missed him. I gripped at the steering wheel like my life depended on it -and it sorta did. I've realised time is a bitch. It stretches endlessly when you are suffering. Every bend in the road that I passed, every 2 km of ice and grit I got through without swerving uncontrollably into incoming traffic, every minute of those looong looooong 3 hours when I didn’t die a miserable frozen death felt like a steal. I got to the hotel room and I collapsed on the floor weeping over the stupidity of it all. Why did I even put myself through this shit?
Unfortunately, I have not come back from this experience all transformed and filled with earthly passions. I still think this life is a pretty bad joke. I just felt like writing it somewhere, that I was scared to death, every muscle tense, every bone aching but I just lived. And I continue living. One average day at a time.
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