Yesterday.

[jackshoegazer]

Yesterday I was in the taxi with a woman and we heard a report on the radio about how the highest suicide rates are among the elderly.  The woman didn't know that.  I did.

She said that she could understand that.  She said that she always had her two kids to live for, so she couldn't kill herself, even if she wanted to.  Now, her kids are all grown and out of the house.  She said she supposes she lives for her grandkids now.

I said I never considered it because life is interesting, even when it's bad.  I don't want to miss a moment.  I would want to live longer, to see huge swaths of time go by, to see the ebb and flow of civilization, of evolution.

Then I wondered if there was something wrong with me, that I didn't need to live for someone or something in order to want to keep living.

Also:

On my way home, a woman on my bus had a seizure.  Three or four of them actually.  Everyone on the bus helped in one way or another.  Holding her steady, trying to keep her from swallowing her tongue.  Lowering her to the floor, turning her on to her side, helping the paramedics.

At first, I was dispassionate about the situation.  I watched, detached, studying the seizures, the timing, the effects.  Only when the paramedics hauled her away, I felt sorrow, almost pity for the woman.  Will she not remember?  Wonder how she got from the bus to the hospital, and then think "Oh, no, not again."

Comments

[antarcticlust.livejournal.com]

This is really lovely and sad. And you should post it in jackstaxi.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

Maybe I will :P

[labelle77.livejournal.com]

if there's something wrong with you, then there's that same something wrong with other people too... even at my lowest moments i still want to stay alive out of sheer curiosity to see what comes next.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I had the same thing in school. I had perfect attendance, not because I loved school, but because I couldn't wait to see what would happen next, convinced if I missed a day, I'd miss some crazy event.

[ed1nburgh.livejournal.com]

_{I'm the same way, and I've always felt strange about it. I love having people around me and close relationships, but... if I didn't have them, when they fade, I feel sad, perhaps, and I miss them, but I want to live just because I can. Because there are so many things to see whether I'm with people or not, the world, events, movements, everything.}

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I just don't think we need reasons to live. So many people give up. "I don't have anything to live for." Uh, what? LIFE is the reason, methinks.

(I've always been fascinated by the theory that we all die once we fulfill our potential and purpose in this world, like a fire going out when the wood is all gone. Checking out early, seems to me, like dousing the flames with water, leaving a lot of work/wood to burn.)

[ed1nburgh.livejournal.com]

<sub>I agree. I have PTSD comorbid with bipolar disorder, and before I started to get treatment, I did have that "what's the point?" sort of feeling. My treatment for it hasn't been medications (none of them really work), but just... immersing myself in the fact that I am alive, and that is all the reasons I need to live. There are so many things in this world that make life worth living--why try to get away from them?

(I love that metaphor. I think you're absolutely correct.)</sub>

[teresalu.livejournal.com]

It's good to have that kind of outlook, I guess. Living just for the sake of living. Or maybe we're all attached to something but we just don't know what it is.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

(I've always been fascinated by the theory that we all die once we fulfill our potential and purpose in this world, like a fire going out when the wood is all gone. Checking out early, seems to me, like dousing the flames with water, leaving a lot of work/wood to burn.)

[helpimarock.livejournal.com]

I don't have any other reaction to this post than it was two very rich slices of life.

"Then I wondered if there was something wrong with me, that I didn't need to live for someone or something in order to want to keep living."

I think it comes with age. Specifically, after we've lived and explored the world for several decades we start to live through our younger loved ones. It's the case for at least some people anyway because I came face to face with it in my Grandma when my Grandpa died and even moreso when my Dad, her son, died little more than a year later.

[jackshoegazer.livejournal.com]

I am constantly reminded of something RAW one wrote about how immortality is programmed into our DNA and our bodies translate that as procreation. Thus, we live on in our children.