Death Knocks Ever So Often ...

The title of the post may make one think, "Damn Monkey is going to be morbid today!". But quite the opposite really.

I remember the first time I really thought about my own death. My parents and some other people were playing cards at a table. I was at that awkward age, you know the one, where you're old enough to start needing therapy for reality and the one where you still live in a fantasy world where Susan Sarandon is your girlfriend and nothing can prevent you from being happy with her! Anyway, someone at the table was talking about the end of the world from a biblical standpoint and I thought to my Monkey self, "damn I'm going to die when I'm 30." Yes this was my first childhood emotional trauma, obsessing about death.

My 30th birthday came and went and I was still here on earth. It wasn't until a year later that I thought about death again. My partner and I at the time had been together for nine years. I loved her with all of my being. For nine years I had planned the rest of my life with her, doing things with her, my work revolved around her,cmy dreams around her, okay you get the point. Then we both decided after a year of emotionally abusing one another that it just wasn't worth it. I was the one that finally took that step to end it. Hell, I even moved to another city to keep myself from going back to her. But still, when I walked out that door, away from her arms, death came to my mind again. I thought damn, here I am 30, my dreams, job and relationship are gone and I have nothing, nothing to live for.

So I just existed. Started a new life, in a new city. I drank way to much, smoked way to much weed, and hung out with some pretty questionable people. I was at a point in my life where I didn't really give a shit what happened to me. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't suicidal, I just had no purpose in life. Even though I was surrounded by many people, for the first time in my life I knew the feeling of being lonely. I became closed emotionally to people and once again my fathers words echoed in my ear, "It's not your enemies that know how to hurt you, it's those that you let close to you." So, I built walls and didn't let anyone close. I started to have an emotional death.

Then one day I heard the Annie Lennox song, Cold, there is a line she sings in it, " Dying is easy, it's living that scares me to death ..." The whole song is pretty extraordinary. It opened my eyes and heart back up and then out of the blue I realised that it is much braver to open back up and let people in than it was to stayed closed up. I started to do the one thing that scared me more than death. I started to live again, with all it's risk and pain, it's much more scary than death to me.

Life and letting people into yours'

Yes, it is worth having.

Yes, it is worth keeping.

Yes, it is worth living for.