I'm back

Not sure I have anything to say yet. Or, more to the point, I know I have a lot to say, I don't know how much of it can be translated into words and actually put forth here.

But just thought I'd drop in. It's been two months since I've written anything.

I just published a post I started and never finished about my cousin's suicide. I can't add anything to it, though it wasn't done. Nothing more about death in my life since then, thank goodness!

I want to say something wise about suicide, in the aftermath of it all - I have had one peer and one younger than me kill themselves, and I am only 37. I didn't think I would ever know anyone who did that. I dont' know if there's anything wise to say. Don't do it. duh. Some people are in sooo much pain, though. I would say that I really wish there was a way to communicate to people that it's worth asking for help. I really wished, in both cases, that they had turned to me. With my cousin I think it would have helped, with my young friend I really don't know. But in both cases I felt that they felt really really really alone, in a way that they really weren't. I felt that maybe each of them gave up before really risking it all in asking for help - in being vulnerable. I don't know though. I don't have the sorts of demons I think some of my beloveds do. Maybe I simply don't understand.

I did the sweatlodge workshop at FGC Gathering a few years ago, a year after my cousin died. I rememer, before we went into the lodge, the leader talked about how the heat and the closeness can get to people and they need to leave, to breathe, to stretch, but he also said, if you feel like that, say "I think I need to leave" and we'll see if we can make it better, and if we can't, you'll leave. And someone needed to leave, but we shifted around to give more room, and let them move to the back, where it's cooler, and you can stick your hand out the back, and they did that. And it turned out that they stayed. I remember thinking, I wish Jon had been able to do that - to say "I think I need to leave" and see what his loved ones could do - just a little shifting, a little adjustment, a little awareness - to make it possible for him to stay.

I hate that some religions say that you'll go to hell if you kill yourself. The idea that God would be anything but waiting with open arms to comfort one of her children who had been in that much pain is simply too mean.

I don't want to tell people they can't kill themselves. I want to really care about each other so that we all know that we'd be mourned. That we all feel needed, and we all feel free to be what we are, and to ask for what we need, even if it seems like too much.

Anyway, I didnt' meant to write about suicide. It's so depressing.