That is the question...

SO yesterday was sort of bullshit.  I mean, it wasn't, at the time.  But now I feel very dissimilar.  Such is the way of things when you're bipolar I guess.

My therapist made me, I mean physically stopped me and held me and made me look her in the eyes and promise I'd call her if I felt like harming myself.

I made the promise, but not easily.

Everytime I have felt like harming myself I have stoutly refused to call her, or anyone.

Because when you're in that frame of mind you don't want help, you don't want people who care, you don't want to be saved.

You want to finally screw up enough courage to fucking get it fucking overwith already

Because.  Cowardice.

A few weeks ago, when I was feeling similarly to this, Aaron took the day off of work to stay home with me. This is a man who doesn't get paid for sick time.  He was concerned enough about what I'd do at home if left to my own devices that he stayed home despite losing all the pay.

And in his arms we spoke at length about Hamlet's soliloquy.

You know the one.

Everyone thinks they know it.

We've all hear it, or, rather, parts of it, again and again and again and again.  in movies, cartoons, tv, in other fuc king plays, in passing party conversation, in song and ad infinitum.

To be or not to be that is the question.

Most of us associate this line with hack acting.  To most of us, this line IS the quintessesntial shakesperain line, coupled with some affected british accent thespian in a ruffled collar holding a skull.  The charicature shakespeare.  Shakespeare distilled.

But that monologue, when read correctly, when you get past all the centuries of bullshit (I mean, actors dread having to give this soliloquy simply because it is so fucking over-exposed.  You feel like a quack the minute the words spill over your tongue!), once you really look deeply at it?

It is absolutely and on a deeply human level, so fucking TRUE TO LIFE.

If your life is that of a person who frequently considers and contemplates suicide.  It isn't this big existentialist (before there was a term for that) wankfest.

It is the real conversation that depressed individuals have with themselves over and over and over.  It is filled with reason but colored by cowardice.  It is aching and yearning and absolutely riddled with pain.

And, sitting there, in my husbands arms and going through that soliloquy line by line (he memorized it when he played Hamlet in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, of course), I wept.

I wept because someone knew my heart completely.  Understood my tangled, thorny thoughts better than I did myself.  I wept because I wasn't alone, as I so often feel in those times--not because I was cradled in my lover's embrace (you see, in a deep depression this closeness can sometimes have a numbing effect--can sometimes make one lonlier still, because being so close to a vital being, a pumping heart, especially of one who 'loves' you?  This often makes the depressed person feel more alien.  Further distances them from their own humanity.  Look at the way Hamlet treats Ophelia!), but because someone, some fucking PLAYWRIGHT in some dusty theatre's backroom, scribbled this amazing piece of revelation down onto vellum.

To exist or not to exist is the problem, the question at hand.
Whether it is braver, m ore righteous, to suffer your fate
or to take a stand and say "fuck you" to the hand you've been dealt.
To just... go to sleep, nothing more!  And by doing so,
To take matters into my own hands and end all the pain, the misery, the awfulness.
It is something to strive for, to reach for, it is a desire...
To die.  To just sleep... (how nice would that be?)
But there's the fucking catch.
Because in this sleep of death, this eternal sleep, what kind of dreams/nightmares will take me?
It gives us pause.
And it makes our lives long and full of suffering.
The fear of what's after death is what makes cowards of us.
We're afraid to take control and kill ourselves because nobody really knows
What waits after we draw our final pitiful breath.
 Because why else put up with a shitty, awful, miserable life, but for fear of the afterlife?
The undiscovered country from which no traveler returns (thanks, will).
It weakens our resolve.
It holds us back from taking that last, final, and yearned-for step to freedom.
These THOUGHTS, these useless fucking machinations of the cowardly brain
they stand in the way of ACTION
and the moment is once again lost...  Till next time we start this whole fucking debate again...


But there's a reason everything sounds better coming from the bard...


HAMLET: To be, or not to be--that is the question:

Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer

The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune

Or to take arms against a sea of troubles

And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--

No more--and by a sleep to say we end

The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks

That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--

To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,

Must give us pause. There's the respect

That makes calamity of so long life.

For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely

The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,

The insolence of office, and the spurns

That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,

When he himself might his quietus make

With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,

But that the dread of something after death,

The undiscovered country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns, puzzles the will,

And makes us rather bear those ills we have

Than fly to others that we know not of?

Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,

And thus the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,

And enterprise of great pitch and moment

With this regard their currents turn awry

And lose the name of action