I would not have been able to live with myself if I had denied who I was and my passion for travel. Life is too short to fake it. You have to be true to yourself. -- Anita Mac
Anita Mac, a travel blogger, committed suicide.
Everyone thought she had everything. She left a successful corporate job so she can follow her passion for travel, because for her, life is too short to be faked. She was living her dream.
I often told friends that it is simply imbecile to take your own life when there is so much more to live for. Justice for others. Family. Dreams. Prospect of a beautiful future. After all, life is not just about us, it is more about how humanity will benefit from our lives--that is life's worth.
I was idealistic then.
After life has gotten into me… after my youth has ebbed… after my faithful waiting for "the life beyond my imagination…", I can somehow understand Anita.
Sadness is a lonely place, a merciless black hole that will suck out the hopes and the joys out of you; A tidal wave that will sweep you from your comfort zone to nowhere--to a place familiar, because sadness works on cycles, and yet unknown, unchartable, and unfathomable. Forever a foreign terrain.
Sadness paints a patina of gloom over all one's windows and blocks all sunlight. Until there is nothing but darkness. And when one sees nothing, sees nobody--one is alone.
Aloneness is a terrible place. A terrible, terrible place.
A future of aloneness is like a guillotine at the end of the road.
What does one do when the cycle seems inescapable? Should he/she fake it? But life is too short to be faked. Its either you live alive or you are just breathing. When one defines life as merely breathing and doing things just to get by with life, that is not life at all but death masquerading. One must live life truly or waste away.
Anita dreamed she can have have everything. She can fulfil her life's passion--traveling, and have a home life with the one she loved.
But yes, as I grew older, I have learned that one can never have everything. There is no such thing as a perfect life. Not all dreams will come true. No one can have it all.
Painful but true.
***
Even boats who love being swept from sea to sea need a safe, warm harbor every now and then. Even wild foxes need homes. Even the strongest person needs a sanctuary where he/she can be his/her weakest because it is okay to be not okay sometimes.
She said, "I have written about solo travel – but what about solo life? Everyone is gone..."
Maybe, just maybe... if Anita had someone to tell her that its alright to weep, if someone was there to just hold her hand, if someone was just there to even sit with her in silence over a cup of coffee--she might still be alive. She would need time to heal. Yes, it may take a long time to salve her wounds. But she might still be alive if somebody was there to tell her that she is not alone to make it through that harsh journey.
I spent all afternoon thinking about her. I saw myself speaking the same lines as in her last blog (www.traveldestinationbucketlist.com). Perhaps, our circumstances are different. But, like all humans, I am no foreigner to sadness. I have felt the pain of believing in something only to see it fall away from my hands like flowing water. I am struggling with the seemingly unsurmountable things that must be done, things I must change, and things I just have to accept and deal with. Struggling even with the future that has not yet come.
I guess, sadness is generic. It's a sickness--a beast, that can tear at the very heart of any human being. Until that person becomes blind to other possibilities of life and all there is is a cycle of pain--inescapable, unending nothingness that is numbing and debilitating as the cycle unravels. Death begins at the heart. Begins with the coldness setting in on a soul. It grows. The physical death is but a symptom of a disease that had been growing from a crushed spirit who had found no home.
No matter how strong a person is, that person needs other people to make him/her feel less alone. Because sadness is a lonely place. A terrible, terrible place to be. In this world of billions of people, nobody deserves to be there.
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Father, I may not understand how you work all the time. But somehow, it lifts me that I may not see you but you are there. And it is only you that lights my path in my winter days, holds my hands so I can walk on through the chill. I pray for all those people, Lord, who are suffering at this very moment. Those who are feeling alone and desperate. Poke us awake if there is someone in our midst who needs our warmth. May, even in our own personal battles and darknesses, we give a little sunshine to those who have none.