Dancing With Death

This is kind of a mess lol but it just sort of happened. It’s basically an entry from my personal journal; a musing, if you will. This is a topic I’ve touched on before. Welcome to my mind.

Trigger warning for mention of suicidal thoughts.

I am not a therapist, healer, or mental health professional. These words are not guidance, only reflections. May they meet you gently, but please seek the care you need should your shadows ask for more than this space can offer.

I see the appeal, in dying. In the silence that calls from the depths of death. Now, before you go and say I’m promoting suicide, let me explain.

Death and I, we’ve danced before. mostly in thought, but once in truth. It was an accident. A needle in my spine was pushed in a little too far, and my body surrendered to the call. It’s funny, thinking about it now. For most of my life, I was always the one calling death. Begging him to come get me and hold me close. He never answered. There were a few times where we sat in the room together, but we never embraced. Until that one moment, on a day meant for joy and life.

I can’t tell you the imagery of his realm. All I can describe is a feeling and a knowing. Freedom. Pure, peaceful freedom. In freedom lives love and joy and ease and satisfaction. I felt complete and surrounded by love. With that came one clear knowing. Death isn’t real. Not in the sense that it is an end.

Waking from that freedom felt… incomplete. I didn’t understand why life felt heavy. Not in pain or trauma, that weight was still there; it was one I knew well. But this weight was simply the feeling of existing physically, it felt unwanted… if I’m being honest. I didn’t want to go back into “Deaths” arms; I just wanted to feel the wholeness that embraced me during my visit. So, instead of leaping back into the freedom I knew waited for me.

I started asking questions. “How do I stay here, with the ones I love, and feel that feeling?” “How can I love my life, now?” “What did that experience mean? And how does that connect with who and what I am?” And I’ve found my answers. The ones that are right for me that is. The answers didn’t come from any single book or teaching. They came from turning inward, trusting myself, and trusting the love I knew existed in that freedom. That trust led me to others on the same path of seeking. It led me to teachers, both young and ancient, who stirred something in my own knowing. My thoughts shifted. My understanding shifted. My beliefs shifted. And with that, my reality began to shift.

For a time, it was honestly incredibly difficult to remember that I was not just a vibrational being but also a human. I searched for ways to bridge the new truths I carried with the mind and body I lived in. Often, I found beliefs that supported struggle and exhaustion. But I knew those weren’t aligned with the truth I had felt. Slowly, I allowed them to transform into beliefs that felt good and true for me.

That’s why social media is hard for me now. Not out of judgment or superiority, I have no high horse; but because I no longer resonate with beliefs that glorify struggle. I’m not shaming anyone for anything. Personal truths are just that, personal. I just can no longer relate to consistently living in an environment I fought to leave. It’s not that I don’t care, it’s that I care immensely; about how I feel, about what I am feeding within others. I am not a “Positive patty” Because I fear or demonize negative emotions. I love negative emotions. They let me know when I’m holding a belief that doesn’t align with the truth I have remembered about myself. Negative emotions are a beautiful barometer. It’s just that now, I acknowledge them, take ownership of them, allow them their moment, thank them for the opportunity to redirect my thoughts, and release them with love.

The shift from struggle mindset to ease is not one that has happened overnight. After 30+ years of foundational beliefs that said struggle and pain are requirements for living, it takes some time and effort to change them. It’s something I am still working on. It is a consistent process of reminding myself that I get to choose what my beliefs are.

I wasn’t taught that growing up. I was told how life was supposed to be and what I was supposed to believe. So, life has always been a cycle of beliefs handed down in fear. I don’t want that for my life, or anyone really. Because, why? Why tell my children that life is meant to be ugly and painful? That their worth is determined by the value someone else places on them. In my lived experience, children taking their cue from adults who are living from a place of fear, only breeds more generations steeped in fear. Why not take our cue from children instead. They find joy so easily. Their love is so pure and untainted by the struggle we choose to carry. I didn’t die and come back for life to stay painful. Regardless of the years, well… decades, I spent living with passive suicidal ideation, I never truly wanted to die. I just didn’t want life to feel like shit. So, I started choosing ideas and beliefs that felt a little less like shit. I changed where I placed my focus; minding what I “Paid” attention to.

I’ve worked hard (though it hasn’t always felt like work) to become self-aware enough to let go of what doesn’t serve me, and to embrace beliefs that bring life into alignment with freedom and love. I have released trauma that I didn’t think I would aver be able to; simply by thinking, “I don’t want this to come with me in the new life I am creating for myself. I’m grateful for the clarity it gave me, but it can stay here.” Was it an instant, “Drop it off on the side of the road and walk away”? Nope, it took reminding myself daily that it was okay for me to leave it where it was. It’s littereally rewiring the brain lol

I’m not here to convince or preach. I’m also not here to shame or criticize. My truths… My beliefs… Are ones I have discovered and remembered about myself and for myself. What feels right for me, might not be what feels right to others and that’s wonderful honestly. I don’t write things like this hoping to make people think the way that I do. That would be silly and honestly, really shitty to do.

I suppose the purpose of writing this is to take some of the fear out of death. Not to encourage dancing with him too soon, but to encourage living more fully, with intention. My youth was spent with death’s number written on my hand, but that’s not the call I wish for anyone. I share these stories of my journey because when I was going through the hardest moments, I didn’t see a way out that kept me here. I knew that it was possible that a light existed at the end of the tunnel, but it wasn’t bright enough for me to see.

My hope is that we all begin to answer a different call: the call of our own truths. To live fully, completely, intentionally, and utterly in love with ourselves. Because life isn’t a gift waiting to be unwrapped; it’s something we choose, consciously or unconsciously, again and again, in each moment, with every breath. Life is supposed to feel good! And the fact that even the idea of that feels foreign and impossible, is why so many people would just rather not live.

I want you to live. I want to hear your story. I want to see the beautiful and wonderful life you create. I want to watch you find joy where once only sorrow bloomed. I want to hear you speak of your love, after not being able to find your voice through the hate. I want to know the truth of your heart. as you shed the lies you were given. I want you to live. So do that, okay?

Love you friend,

Bea