imitation suicide

Everyone, at least I hope everyone, has one of those wise sage friends that is so honest it can drive you crazy. They always say what you need to hear but never want to hear. I often try to tune mine out, at least when I am being stubborn and childish. But something that this girl said to me the other day really hit me. I was wallowing in self pity upset about lots of little things and not really willing to fully open up. (Of course, she later did get me to spill my guts which I found is quite an incredible feeling.) She compared me to a friend of hers that had done her very wrongly and said, "You might as well join him and all the rest of them and go be a cutter. You're being so emo." What?! Me? Emo? Just because I chopped my hair off and it slightly resembles a punkish look especially when I style it right does not make me emo. That was not what she meant. She continued on with her lecture and re-visited it with more advice and comfort after my tell-all session. And though I hate to admit, she was right. No, I am not going to start cutting myself or anything crazy like that, but it was enough of a shock to wake me up and realize something. We get hung up on all the little stuff in life. We get so selfish about what we want and don't have and lose all patience with God. We feel lonely, rejected or a myriad of other emotions that get us down and depressed. And then we just hide ourselves away from the world wanting the hurt to all go away. Seriously?! It has to stop, at least that is what I decided for myself. God's got a plan for us, and He is so much smarter than we could ever hope to be that we might as well start trusting in His better judgement in things. When we push away from our friends and God just to pout over what is wrong with our lives, I like to think of it as committing imitation suicide. We aren't dead and have not taken our own lives, but with the way we're acting it's almost like we did. We are not there for our friends anymore. We have lost that beautiful connection with God because we have foolishly decided we are not on "speaking terms" with our Maker until He gives into our demands.
My favorite movie is "The Princess Bride," and among all the awesome quotes one that relates to gives this is when the nasty prince gives Buttercup an ultimatum which he ends out with, "consider me an alternate to suicide?" This may seem a weird relation, and it is. I am trying to see myself where I am going with this. Not to compare great friends and such with an egotistical and fictional prince, but sometimes when we are feeling down and going into our slump, when the help is offered, we should accept it, as an alternate to reclusiveness. What is the point in wasting so much of life, which we only have so much of, in the state of unhappiness? There is not one. Even when all else fails, even when we feel like life just is not fair, we need to step back, take a deep breath and let it all out. Nothing can make you feel better. God is always there and we need to just give the burden over to Him where it belongs. I'm tired of being unhappy all the time. I might still act crazy some days, but as long as at the end of the day I can look back and smile and pick out all the good in it and forget any bad, then life is and will always be good. So live life now and never ever look back.