THE PRECIPICE OF LIFE AND DEATH
As the years go by, and the roller coaster of anticipation and disappointment relentlessly jostles my ever-tiring soul to its core, I have finally come to that moment when life and death become real.
At class tonight, struggling through another difficult session, convinced that after three levels of .NET courses there was no chance in hell I'd ever grasp this programming thing, I walked out for good. I strolled up to my car, got in, and sat for some interminable period mulling over the mess my life had become.
The past 18 months were a perfect storm, setting the stage for collapse: I'd worked non-stop each day attempting to help finance a failing financial firm, not knowing whether the doors would open the next day; became the subject of an SEC investigation that should never have gone further than my supervisor's desk; was betrayed by a man I considered both a mentor and friend pursuant to said investigation; began studying web development at university as a means to chart a different future for myself and my family, and failing badly at it; daily endured a marriage teetering on divorce, likely due to a combination of aforementioned stressors and radically diverging values (due to deep spiritual incompatibilities, and;) took a new job I wasn't really suited for at 40% my previous income, creating the grim reality of not being able to provide for my family.
It probably comes as no surprise these things had taken an extreme toll on me. Not to mention at that time my spiritual landscape was populated by contradictions like a Dali composition. I looked deeply into my soul and realized my frailty had finally caught up with me. For all the times I've struggled through the years, a part of me would cling fervently to the idea that things would get better, given enough time and maturity. That hope is easy to come by when you are young, for it seems like so much life lays before you; but I'm not young anymore. At least I don't feel young. What I do feel, and what I felt on Monday night, was the collapse of what was left of that sanctuary of hope.
I contemplated the terrible turn my life has taken the past year, all my failed efforts to right the ship, and all the spiritual dead ends that offered no safe harbor from this storm, and discovered when thoughts of ending my life emerged, there was no resistance. It was real, and it was time. There was no toying around with the idea, no idle threat concealing a loathsome self-pity - there was only the thought that I have tried this thing called life and found that my best isn't anywhere nearly good enough.
And so I decided to drive home, open the car windows, close the garage door, leave the car running, and fall asleep. Rest sounded so appealing, and hope did not come. For the longest time as I drove, nothing emerged from or interrupted the silence. When it did, what emerged was terror. My soul screamed in desperation, wanting to know why things had gone so terribly wrong, wanting to know how someone with a good heart could become so terribly deformed - desperate for, but unable to see, any way out. I cried out openly to God for help with an intensity I'd only dreamt about before. I screamed in the depths of my soul, but He did not speak. Not this time.
Instead, what I received was an inexplicable calm, a presence that filled me with enough peace to go home and go to bed and promise to wait until morning to contemplate what I might do to keep from ending myself. It was enough to help me take that next step, and that next step kept me going. That night, not only death, but life became more real to me - and that itself was a boundless measure of grace I will not soon forget.