The Knife-Edge Choice – A Philosophy from Suicide
When I was fifteen, I sat on the floor, knees drawn up to my chin, with my back braced against my bedroom door. I gazed at my blurry reflection in the strangely scratched and aged stainless steel of a filleting knife. My soft fingers caressed the cool blade.
I remember sitting there as if that moment is burned in my mind. I remember every thought that went through my head in those short minutes. I was on the pinpoint edge of irrevocable choice and reality was as sharp as the edge of the blade in my hands.
Not five feet from where I sat, I could hear my mother and sister. My sister’s room was beside mine and they were arguing, again. They seemed to do that more and more often as my sister, two years older that I, struck out for her own independence and my mother vied to keep her family whole and protected. My brother, in the room on the other side of mine, was more or less “stable” after his recent dance with psychosis.
I remember in those moments, wondering if the bottle of straight Vodka I kept behind the mirror in my vanity could kill me too. I wondered which would be easier. The blade would hurt, it would also be messy, and I didn’t know enough about how human bodies worked to be sure I could use it effectively. But then again, alcohol poisoning wasn’t foolproof either. And what did the means matter when no one would care I was gone.
A memory frozen in time within me, a choice. A never simple, always desperate, irrevocable choice.
I’m standing here today because I chose to stand up, to put the knife away, and have “just one more day”. And, for every day since I am deeply grateful.
Many people make a different choice when they face that keen edge. And, I feel, in that moment they make the choice that is right for their life and soul. In that moment, the life, or death behind that sharpened edge, is a part of the lesson that lifetime has to teach them.
The choice we make, is entirely our own. We embrace our sense of personal responsibility in its most basic form. We embrace our power to make at least THIS choice in our lives. We perch on the brink between being the person we are, or giving ourselves into whatever comes after. And no matter what any of us believe about the afterlife, the choice we each make today, to live at least one more day, is ours alone.
What many who stand on that knife-point never face is the true impact our life has on those lives around us. At fifteen, I felt invisible, forgotten. I honestly believed that my life or death was insignificant to those I loved. But, beyond that choice I can look back and acknowledge that the belief I held was unfounded. If I had made a different choice that day I would have devastated many lives. I would have shaped a significant crater into the lives of every person I knew. I would have changed the lives of every person I was yet to know. I would have influenced the people they knew. And through six-degrees of separation my death would have impacted many thousands.
The greatest sadness in suicide is the sense of disconnection and unrelatedness. We forget that we are all united in this Brotherhood of Man. We are all a part of the Greater Divine, the Universal Energy. And while we each stand apart with our personal responsibility and right to make individual choices, we need to be aware of the impact our smallest choices have on those around us.
For those whose lives have been touched by a loved one making the “other” choice be thankful, for the lessons their choice have had in your life. Give thanks for the blessings, experiences, and opportunities that came to you since for they may not have been available to you had that life not touched yours. In gratitude, acknowledge their life, their death, and your continuing connection with their spirit through your shared soul-journey.
And today, make a point to let someone around you know how much they mean in your life. Because you might not realize how close to that edge your friend, your sibling, your child, is standing. A smile, a touch, a simple word, could be enough to make them feel their connection to the universe; to help them choose, “just one more day”.