Another Lifetime

I've wanted to die plenty in my life.

I've felt myself a victim of the Anything that can happen.

I experienced years of severe distortion of my taste and smell that robbed me of senses I found were making life seem worth living.

I had my life wiped out completely three times.

Those identity deaths ARE deaths, and simply being in them, the part of me that agrees with reality will say "I want to die." I am dying, a version of me, so I want to be dying, because that's reality.

Yes, I have wanted to die.

But there is one thought that stops me from taking this to serious suicidal ideation.

"What if it's just another human lifetime?"

What if I can only change the channel, never turn off the experience?

If I have to be a human in a life all the time I'm ever experiencing, why not this one now?

I have sunk costs here. I've figured at least a few things out. I really love these people who really love me.

I've navigated SO much pain, what's a little more, for old times' sake?

I'm feeling nothing? I'm feeling numb? I'm feeling betrayed by my senses of the world and reality and anything I might count on?

Those are all still feelings, all still human experiences I can be having. Numbness is a feeling. Nothing is something I can experience.

And maybe it's only a human experience, or else only a human that can experience.

If I could truly opt out of being, how could I have an experience? What would be there to have the experience?

If what I'm hating is being an experiencer of a human lifetime, I haunt myself with the idea that might be all there is.

I can't know what comes after death, but I'll be sticking this life out, because maybe, after this, it's just another human lifetime.