THE VIEW

It has been nearly twenty years since I sat in a dark room, smoking cigarettes, flipping through an old photo album filled with pictures from my childhood. I stopped at a picture of my father holding my tiny hand in his. Beside the picture was written, “Hand in hand with daddy forever.” I ran my fingers over the page and wished that things could be that way again. But even though he was somewhere on this Earth, that was not possible. And so I sat motionless in the dark crying, waiting to fall asleep. Afterall, if the life that lay before me was not the life that I had envisioned, than perhaps the alternative was not to live it.  Perhaps the alternative was simply not to live.

Filled with loneliness and despair, I went to the medicine cabinet and gathered everything together. The pills, the capsules, the tablets—I  swallowed them all, and then I wrote my good-bye note.  Misshapen letters scrawled across the paper spelled out that I was tired; that all I wanted was to go to sleep and never wake up. I sat back on the couch, waves of blackness crashing over me. 

But there was this noise—this incessant ringing inside my ears that wouldn’t stop, that refused to be ignored. The telephone. And in that moment I made a choice. A choice to reach out and save myself. I chose to put the pieces of my shattered-self back together.

In that moment, had you asked me why people attempt suicide, I could not have narrowed it down to only one reason. I can now. The road to suicide is paved with traumatic loss and unresolved pain. My loss and pain came as the result of what I refer to as “the death of my family and friends.” 

At the age of seventeen my world imploded. The ever-pleasing, never-defiant Preacher’s daughter decided that she no longer wanted to be a member of the religious faith in which she had been raised. The day that my secret was revealed I sat opposite two church elders. A meeting had been convened for the purpose of deciding my fate. 

It had been brought to the elders’ attention that I had sinned. I had gotten drunk on a prior occasion, and they wanted me to repent. Simple. All I needed to say was that I was sorry. I desperately wanted to tell them what they wanted to hear, but I couldn’t. It would have been a lie, and I was tired of living a life that I no longer believed in. The tears pooled in my eyes, and when I was finally able to speak the words—“I am sorry for what you will have to do, but I am not sorry for what I have done”—I couldn’t stop them from spilling over and streaking down my cheeks.

There was nothing more to be said. The heavy silence that fell between us signaled that everyone knew what my pronouncement meant. I would be ex-communicated from the Church, my parents would disown me, and the only friends I had ever known would turn their backs and walk away from me.

People often look at me peculiarly when I recount “the death of my family and friends.” The notion of one’s family and friends choosing a belief-system over their child is so foreign to most people that they cannot relate. They can never know the tremendous pain that I felt then, and still feel even to this day. The pain, however, is no longer debilitating; it no longer threatens to consume me. There has been a transformation of sorts. A transformation that has been nearly two decades in the making—one breath and one day at a time.

For the first seventeen years of my life who I was, and what I was, had been defined in terms of religious doctrine. When I was stripped of that identity, I was “lost” and left to wander alone. The most important thing I came to understand with the passage of time, however, was that I was not the one in need of forgiveness and redemption. Even though others had labeled me a sinner and unworthy of membership within their group, I dared to define my own self-worth, the type of person that I would be, and the type of life that I would live.

When I uttered those life-altering words, “I am sorry for what you will have to do, but I am not sorry for what I have done,” I made a choice to walk my life’s path alone. That was not what I had envisioned for myself or my future. The alternative, however, was far more bleak—continuing to live a life that others wanted for me. Finally the time had arrived when being able to look myself in the face each day with respect and dignity took precedence over having the acceptance and approval of others.  

I used to believe that being true to myself had cost me more than it was worth. I no longer feel that way. Even when faced with expulsion from the only way of life I’d ever known, I remained faithful to what I believed in. In spite of the judgment pronounced against me, I never compromised myself. And although my spirit was crushed in the aftermath, in time it learned to soar higher than it ever had.

But this gentle current of despair kept swirling about my mind and body, seducing me with the promise of release from pain. I had but only to give myself over to the illicitness of the affair; allow myself to be swept out to sea.

But I was “aware”. And this awareness was gnawing at my nerve endings and alighting my mind with brilliant fire. The tide could carry me away, but I was aware that it could also wash me gently ashore, a place where I had once stood. I just needed to rise up and  move.  I needed to place one foot in front of the other, let the wet sand squish between my toes, and slowly make my way back toward solid ground.  

A wise man once told me that two people could stand atop the same mountain, but that the view, and what it meant to be there, would be different for each person. The one who had needed to fight to reach the summit would appreciate it far more than the person who had not. While I could never have imagined that I would have to climb alone, my view from the summit is incredible. It is awe-inspiring and beautiful. It is mine – I earned it.

The life-path that stretches out before me, as far as my eye can see, is full of endless possibilities. And I no longer walk that path alone. With me, hand-in-hand forever, are my two precious babies and my fearless husband. From atop my mountain the view is second-to-none.