I Kind of Want to Die

Last week I went for a walk with a friend. We’re old friends and have gone in and out of seeing each other for the past thirty years. As we walked through the arboretum talking about all of the hard, sad things in this world right now I said something I would only say to a longtime friend.

“I kind of want to die,” I said to her. I am not suicidal at all and feel grateful that I don’t have any acute mental health concerns right now but I look with envy at my ninety-three-year-old stepfather sometimes. He’ll surely die before this world becomes truly unlivable.

“Me too!” my friend exclaimed, “I totally get where you’re coming from. We’ve lived a good, long life and we could be done.”

A few days later I was talking to another close friend. As always the conversation turned to the lamentations of our upside-down society and tortured planet. “Sometimes I really just want to die,” I said to her.

“I’ve felt that way,” my friend said, “last month when I was camping and I imagined having to pack up all the gear and all the food I thought to myself, ‘if I died now I wouldn’t have to do this.’” She continued, “Really, I would be okay dying now.”

She told me that her husband never feels this way but she knows that another friend we share does. 

When I got home last night I told my partner about these conversations. “I’ve felt that way,” she said, “I understand how you feel.”

I deliberated a lot before I started to write about this “I kind of want to die” attitude. But hearing my friends and learning of this shared experience of feeling the “I kind of want to die” bolstered my confidence to write about it. 

I am a mother and a wife. I have a large extended family and a huge community of people I love and care about. But some days, even on days when I am not aware of the ins and out of the news, the bad outweighs the good.

I’m just being honest. The intensity of the sadness, loss, division, racism, infighting, pollution, and denial is greater than the joy and delight that come from the daily interactions I have with the good parts of life. I can remember a few years ago, right after I sold my business, I was floating in a happiness bubble. Everything seemed to be coming up roses. My family was good. My friends were abundant. There was no COVID. Life was good and all was well. 

Now I feel like I scrape together happy moments like puzzle pieces, trying to create a full scene of goodness that I can step inside of like Mary Poppins’ chalk drawings. I try to breathe in every moment of a satisfying conversation on a walk with a friend. I intentionally slow down the family dinner, fully appreciating the precious time of everyone being together. I meditate quietly, closing my eyes to imagine what will feel good today. 

I’ve reached a new threshold, a higher level of tolerance for bad shit than I’ve ever had. It’s okay. I know things will probably get worse before they get better and then better again before they get worse again. I’m learning that this is life. The older I get the more I know and the more I know the harder it gets. 

 I have always been privileged, comfortable. I have always had enough, more than enough. I live in a country free of (for now) dictatorship, in a safe neighborhood. The critic in me scoffs. The gall of it — me saying, “I kind of want to die.”

The truth is that I feel liberated when I say, “I kind of want to die.” It unlatches a tight, little, bursting at the seams Pandora’s box in my chest. Life is too much sometimes and I want to escape. Saying the words is my permission to honor that experience of too much-ness. And it helps. Just saying those words, confiding in a friend about how big the feelings are, eases the pain. The box opens and a little bit of sadness hisses out so I can close it again and carry on.