Sometimes you watch a movie and it resonates with you… Me Before You, a movie about a girl who falls in love with a quadriplegic man for whom she was a companion for, who is hell bent on dying with dignity, in spite of the many people around him who wishes him to live.
The general feeling is he is being selfish.. To end the physical pain that his condition causes him daily. Or the emotional pain, of not being the man he once was, or the ability to become that man he dreamt he would be.
While I felt for the girl in this scenario… I actually wish I could be in the gentleman’s shoes. I understand what it’s like, going to bed each night in pain, wishing that you could just not wake up. I understand the wishing to end it all. The feeling like everything that was good in your life, or the good you could do, the living you could do is over. That from here you are just passing the days until you pass, waiting for death to take you and the thought that the day that happens is years, decades in the future being too much.
Yet, Unlike this man, I can not be selfish. Children depend on me, I have a loving husband. And while I love them as well.. The pain still remains. I find at times, resenting them. My children, so full of life and potential ahead of them. For their need of me, for their love for me that keeps me anchored here to this life. I resent my husband at times because his love helps sustain me enough to be strong enough to stay alive, but not enough to want to live.
How do I explain this to them? How to I explain that it’s not BECAUSE of them I wish I could just sleep forever, but in spite of it. How do I explain, that while I am, for the most part healthy, that I simply can’t even think of a really good reason to get out of bed except that it’s expected of me, and I know I’m needed to shuttle people to and fro. I need to work, use my talents in order to help keep my children off the streets.
How do I get myself out of this numb fog that has become my life? Where every evening, I make a plan for the next day, I’m going to turn it around, get stuff, done, change my life, follow my dreams… I promise myself each night… and every morning, I wake up, resenting the sun in my eyes, and the birds chirping out the window. The emotional pain already creeping in before I even open my eyes at the overwhelming thought of living through yet another day.
I wish I could be like Will Trainor, the paralyzed man. I wish I could just chose to go, in my own way, and have people understand that it’s all just too overwhelming, too painful. But, I cannot. I can not bring myself to tear a mother from her children, or a wife from the man who loves her more than anything. So, I trudge on each day, until finally, one day, I won’t wake up, and finally will be at peace.