The Thirteenth Year

On the anniversary of my mother's suicide.

13 years ago, my mother died by suicide.

I say “died by” because “committed” implies a crime.

She did not commit a crime, but she also did not make a choice, or see her life as one with choices.

I’ve written here often about asking myself what I want, and how revolutionary and life-changing that question can be.

I am not sure that my mother ever got to ask herself that question in the way I have asked myself that question.

13 years ago today, my ideas about who I was and what the world was all disintegrated within moments of finding out she had shot herself.

I will never recover from her suicide, nor would I want to recover.

What would I recover? Everything before her death was transformed by the way she died.

After she died, I learned to accept chaos. I realized: we know nothing.

Nothing about why we are here in this world, and nothing about the invisible realms that surround us. I learned to hold that not knowing and let it be, rather than ascribing to rigid narratives.