For A Better Tomorrow

I’ve gone through many dogs since I was a kid. The first I had was given away when I was really young. Three of them got lost and a couple of them past away. The rest are distributed amongst my family and are still alive today. The two that past away, died at the veterinarian hospital. Both times, I found out by picking up my cell phone and hearing bad news.

This time was different. He died right in front of my face and stopped breathing. It’s really hard to explain that experience but you can imagine how tough it was. A friend of mine describes it as being “powerful” to see life leave the body. The sequence constantly replays in my head over and over. In the end, he’s lived a good life since 1994. 13 years of age times 7 = 91. That’s pretty much a full life for a human being. That’s the thing about dogs, they’ll keep you happy the entire time they’re with you, but the consequence of that happiness is that you will outlive all of them.

“I’ve been MIA”. That seems to be what I’ve been saying to people as of late. It sucks but I do have to get away. The past two months has been nothing but a blurr to me. So many things has happened in my life these last few years that I don’t even know where to start. And when things finally seem to come to an end, I find myself cluttered with more obstacles. It’s been so long since I’ve tasted some freedom in my life. I feel like a slave being handcuffed by the world.

I was talking to a friend at dinner a few nights ago and the subject of committing suicide came up. We were trying to rationalize what drives a person to go that far. He was telling me that it’s because of loneliness and isolation. When I heard those two words from his mouth, the confused thoughts that I had about the meaning of life started clicking. Everyone has problems, whether it’s self imposed or not. It could be a death in the family, girlfriend problems, or financial problems; it doesn’t matter. These are just the common problems we have in our lives as human beings in this society. I am very fortunate to not have gone through all that but I will say that for the first time in my life, I felt very lonely. These past two years has been nothing but loneliness in my life. And I think that’s the real issue here overall. When you’re lonely, everything in the world seems to be crappy. In the end, what separates you from other people is how you manage to overcome that loneliness.

Since I was young, I’ve always played by the rule that if I don’t do anything bad, nothing bad will happen to me. But as we get older, we eventually realize that that’s obviously not the case. Anything can happen to anyone of us at any given time. While this is an obvious statement, I believe that people won’t truly understand it until they experience loneliness.

Loneliness is when everything seems to be going well for everyone except yourself. It’s also when “you think” people don’t realize how much you are hurting inside. When you reach the point of thinking that there is no one out there to help you, you start to give up on life. The body and mind can only take so much. I really feel like I’ve experienced a good jist of that lately. But I’m not worried about myself because I’ve made up my mind a long time ago about being strong. I’ve already decided that I’m going to walk through fire and just take the pain to see what’s on the other side. I am willing to do this even though I know that at one point I’ll be crawling.