Saying yes is not easy, I’m still trying to decide myself. I’ve had suicide attempts in the past because I was confronted with this question and was unable to deal with the coming consequences of being asked such a question. I was weak (not in an offensive way but rather both spiritually and mentally), and I was deciding to say no before I truly thought about it. I didn’t start thinking about it until much recently really. Back in 2020 I had two attempts, one where nothing happened, and the other where my friends came to my rescue, where I then had a weeklong stint in the psych ward. When I got out, I was focused on enjoying my life again and I did just that, unfortunately that path brought me to rehab and almost destroying my relationship with both my family and friends, the ones who saved my life in the first place. After rehab it was a rough time for me mentally, to accept the wrongs that I have committed and the rights I’m going to have to learn to do in the future. Thinking about saying yes to life was nowhere near the front of my mind, for the mean time I was merely existing. I fixed my relationships with my friends and family and I had the wonderful opportunity to make a big change in my life, to move to a new state. So then I was off onto another big moment in my life where I had no time to ponder on my own existence and who I am, and who I’m meant to be, if I’m meant to be. At this point I was alive because of my friends and for my friends. That felt enough to me, but after almost a year of living in the new state, something clicked. I was in the middle of reading the Dune series and the themes and messages of the books were mind-eye opening to say the least. It felt like I was a lizard who was stuck in his old skin for the past two years, scraping and rubbing myself over anything and everything to have it finally peel off but nothing did it, until the day where miraculously my old skin was gone and my new skin is finally visible and able to be shown off, proudly. This was the first moment in my life where I recognized that life is an active activity, it can be passive, like it is for many people, but to truly experience life is to truly be active in life. Now me coming to my senses about this doesn’t mean that I was now an active participant, far from it, more so like the eager younger brother watching his older brother play football from the sidelines and knew deep in his heart that one day he too will play. I just had to wait and be patient and to gather enough understanding of myself and the world around me, then I’ll be ready to play. What bull-honkey did I convince myself with. I read as many philosophy and other philosophical fiction stories as I could to have a better understanding of what I’m going through and it has given me nothing but the knowledge that I truly know nothing. Not to say that my journey into existential and moral philosophy have given me something negative, rather it showed me that no one who is an active participant in life knows much anyways, and yet I still hesitate.
I don’t consider myself an active participant at all, I wake up, I go to work, I cook, I relax, I sleep, and I repeat, with a few outliers here and there. That is me existing, not living. To be alive in a normal sense is to have a pulse and evidence of life, but what I mean when I say to be alive, I mean to be beyond existence. A pebble exists but it is not alive, so too a human could exist but not be alive. Every day I yearn to be alive, but I tend to fall short. That doesn’t mean that I have never been alive, rather I’ve been alive often in college (before my attempts) but I had no awareness or perception of it, whatsoever. But now, I can’t go a day without the question in my mind, do I say yes? Is today the day that I accept it and move forward, or am I to dance around the answer for the rest of my futile existence? I want to say yes, I just don’t have the courage to do so. Not yet, but I will say on a more positive note this internal struggle that I am currently dealing with is forcing me to be reminded of my precious existence and the fact that I can say yes. I have the opportunity to not only say yes but to be tortured by it, to cry because of the indecisiveness, I have the chance to be indecisive and the chance to finally be decisive, to me that's a beautiful thing that I could never truly explain how it feels with words in an effective way (Saverio, my dear friend, will appreciate that part about words not being enough to communicate effectively at times). I love life with my entire being and soul, yet I hesitate. Why is that? I have no answer, which I’m sure by now is predictable. I can say this though, I haven’t said no in a long time and honestly, I don’t think I ever will again, but not saying no is not the same as saying yes either.
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