To Love Life or To End It, That is The Question

i am digging through the trash can to find the pouch of tobacco i had tossed hours ago after swearing i was surely, 100%, never ever going to smoke a cigarette again.

i reach my hand all the way to the bottom. past the soiled cat litter that reeks of piss, past the half eaten can of tomato soup, past the moldy green onion and snatch that tobacco pouch like i had found a precious piece of lost jewelry and roll up a cig.

i wanted to die but was too afraid so i figured i would slowly poison myself.

nothing like a whopping dose of shame to plunge me into such desperation that i am spending my afternoon scrounging a literal maggot infested trash can because i cannot sit with myself for longer than 5 minutes without inner tidal waves completely capsizing me.

plus, this idealized version

of myself is screaming at me.

look at you! you imbecile!

you will never be able to reach

your potential

if you don’t get your shit together.

go to rehab.

go check yourself in.

go call the fucking shamans.

get on some meds.

do something.

because if you keep this up,

you will die a sad, loser death

and your life will be worthless.

and she’s right.

smoking tobacco

that may or may not

be infested with cat piss

that i retreived from the bottom

of a moldy trash can

is not really goddess like of me

not really giving Isis - incarnate

not really giving

Divine Feminine Queen

and in that moment i realized that my whole life has been boiled down to this one question:

To Love Life, Or To End It?

Cheryl Strayed says

“We can’t choose the

cards we we’re dealt, but we have an obligation

to play the hell out of the ones we are holding.”

and i was playing my cards the best i could.

i dug through the trash over 50 times that year. i’d quit. dig. quit again. dig. repeat. past soggy grapes, rotten parsley, bloody tampons.

i dug like my life depended on it. through cut up Amazon packages and empty Olive Oil bottles and expired make up and soiled potatoes and week old spaghetti

i dug for myself through tears and through abuse and through agonizing addictions and through rage and my inner child and through wanting to die

i fought, i fought, i dug for my life

i find it curious how healing stories often end with a perfected version of oneself. they always remind me of getting baptized as a child.

“i was here, in my human filth, a sinner, down and out living in Loserville. then in this one moment, God entered my life. now i’m totally healed and cleansed.”

those stories never inspired me. because it all felt like bullshit.

and there i was, very, very low.

these idealized, perfect versions we create of ourselves are what had me digging through the trash can for months, wrestling with addiction and hating myself.

i could never reach this ideal. i could never be that perfect. i could never be that healed. and so i literally wanted to die and punished myself through shame.

it is an extraordinary thing to celebrate one’s averageness.

the mundane ordinariness we all bear.

in other words...deeply honoring your humanity is the most enlightened thing a human can do.

the act of simply being...oneself. no better. no worse.

because striving for an idealized version of being human can be a form of disassociation, a moving target,

a dangling carrot that is always out of reach.

it can be an insidious form of self harm.

it can be inhumane.

so i learned to love myself not when i was finally where i thought i should be, but when i was addicted, broken, and digging through trash.

those lowest of low moments are where i have touched a spectacular kind of glory - through honoring the inevitable brokenness that comes with being human.

so To Love Life, Or To End It?

That Is The Question.

if you choose to love life,

you must love it all the way. everything that comes with it. the suffering. the horror. the death. the guaranteed brokenness. the pain. the joy. the birds. the ecstasy.

the beauty.

the romance! the drama! the joy!

your decaying body! your own battered history, the scars, the sucker punches to the gut, the glory and your story and your hurt and your healing.

do not love it halfway.

do not dip one toe in.

step all the way in.

the same goes for loving yourself. ❤️