Are we holding on for more history ?

As a teenager in a large Crown Heights family things can feel like they are moving so slowly for you if you hit a down. While you watch the world around you go about there daily routines in slow motion, as if you were never even there.

Your mind is pacing recklessly and speeding up uncontrollably.

"Not of sound mind" a phrase overused by people searching for a way to deal with there own inner feelings of guilt and shame when someone in there life decides to end there own life.

When I just turned bar mitzvah I went through the first real suicidal time in my life.
I was surrounded by family and friends, people who loved and cared for me yet I was all alone.
I remember someone asking a group of friends and I , have you ever thought about killing your self ?Out immediate responses were all the same untruthfull answers, no.

Growing up in a large jewish community and being a part of a movement with respect and stature it is a shameful thing too admit to.
Admitting to contemplating suicide is shunned and frowned at, and you immediately become sick, unstable, depressed, and you are looked at as if you are a rock that can speak.

When thoughts of peaceful death and the pain suddenly coming to a halt began too overcome any other thoughts I could have had I got scared.

My inner pain and loneliness were intensified at a level so horrendous the pain became unbearable and all I could feel racing through my mind was death.
My fear was not of dying, my dream was to die.

I was scared that I would end my life at any moment in my near future if faced with a quick easy method, be it a train or high traffic, a tempting tall building or a sharp object. The hardest thing for me to do at that point was cross the street or rid a a train.
I would mentally hold myself back and fight with myself, it seemed to be a light in the tunnel when I watched the fast cars or the lights on the train that were racing time right towards me and freedom from my misery.I wanted to feel the end more than anything I have ever wanted in my life, I had a burning craving to feel the ultimate pain to end the pain.

I was scared to make the hurt and anguish stop because of my family. What would they go through if I killed myself and ended the pain that they watched me dissolve in too .Somehow my pain eventually subsided, it was ironically when I left and went far away from home for the time of a school year. I felt it just fade away and behind it was a happy passionate romantic person I had never met before.

Now in the present, many years later with many joyful life experiences to look back on and a sense of inner calm and happiness with myself, my life and my future, I some times suddenly wonder.....

Should I have ended my life back then ?

Making the transition from being an empty hopeless child who's only sensation was pain, in to an understanding and compassionate adult who can see beyond social norms and expected cliches like family love and children being precious and priority and understanding and witnessing that morals aren't only morals , but a criteria for some to boast and claim only to make there other social expectations more real to the judgmental cold people on the side lines.

I have had other suicidal periods in my life after that initial shock and content of yearning for death. None as powerful or overbearing, but I always wished they would be.
in hindsight after shedding those feelings of solitude through death I cant help but wonder....

No matter our accomplishments, experiences, happiness, or love, at the end we all have the end.
When all you feel is pain and life to you is fear, in the end when ashes to ashes dust to dust is what your journey and story end in any way......

Does it really matter then if you loved a woman once , for a short time or a passionate self made eternity ? do any of the times you held dear and moments that you savored even matter at all when your life and time come to an end ?

I often wonder when I witness how cold and raw the world can be.......Did I force unnecessary misery on my self for more history ?