peace in hong kong

I think a lot about peace.  I think a lot about how to stop thinking, worrying, feeling, hurting, knowing, all of it.

How nice it would be to have all the emotional pain end, how nice it would be to no longer agonize over decisions or feel the pain of saying no to things I can’t afford to buy for people or struggle with understanding why no one listens to me.

Sometimes I just wonder when when when will it end.  Do I really need more?  Is something going to change and I won’t feel these things. I worry about life decisions or love lost or the feeling of overwhelming guilt over not attending some function locally or far away that really if I were normal I would attend.

I know it is crazy!! I know! I know it is a terrible thing to think about! Everyone says talking about it is a good thing but no one ever wants to talk about it. Almost as much as people didn’t want to hear about my cancer. So many of us live with that now, but it is still not easy to bring up the subject at lunch.

It is an internal struggle. It is my struggle.

Even though I want to be heard, I don’t want to be a burden to others, or even worse, to add this traumatic event to their lives and force them to find the dead body of a loved one, no longer breathing, perhaps in a painful pose as a result of whatever the final moments may have been.

Finding the body, even just knowing where the body had been found, could perhaps forever ruin that bed, that bathtub, that room, that house, or that city for loved ones forced to remember what happened.

A woman I knew loved her children and family so much that she cleaned out her apartment, gave away all her precious and not so precious belongings, said comforting and encouraging things to everyone, closed all her accounts, sold her car, paid all her bills, took care of every detail before taking a cab to a nearby city (so as not to appear in the local papers), then she pinned her name and instructions to her clothing, and jumped off a building.

I don’t feel understood, especially in some of my irrational depression, but I don’t want to hurt anyone, I don’t have a case to make to anyone that my life or my efforts should have been recognized or understood. I don’t really expect that anyone would understand what is in my head. I do my very best to smile and say all the right things and not let anyone know that I want, at times, to end my life.

I thought, what better place than Hong Kong.

Certainly no one in my family is likely to spend any time in Hong Kong. They would never see the room or the bed or the building or the city. There would be no need to rush off in a car to get to the hospital or morgue. I have always wanted to see Hong Kong.

I am writing this now, long after returning from Hong Kong, so you can tell I didn’t end my life. I didn’t go with that one intention. It was a very real possibility to consider. I was preparing for it. There are a lot of tall buildings there but I could never do that. The trip down seems unbearable. I would much rather fall asleep and not wake up. Even when falling asleep there would be some doubt – I still might wake up. I could kind of deceive myself that I was going to wake up and start again the next day.

Some things changed in Hong Kong. I loved the city, the bustling traffic, the people, it is half a world and 12 hours in the future from my world. Just being there brought relief from my worries, even though none of my worries really changed.

Someone said that we come into this world alone and we leave it that way too. I feel very connected to so many people but I am ok being alone too. I thought being alone on the 60th anniversary of my visible arrival on Earth would be a good opportunity to take stock on what more needs to be done before the departure.

Then, on the day of my 60th birthday, a cake arrived from the hotel. “Happy Birthday Mr. Geiger” it said from the Intercontinental Hotel Hong Kong. I wondered how they knew – my birthday must be on my rewards program profile. It was a total surprise and I sat there happy and crying for a few minutes.

I walked around the city a little more. I thought about my life and my options.  I came back to the hotel and swam in the pool for a while. I did healthy things. Then, I got a text from my daughter Margaret – “Dad, can you go out in front of the hotel? There’s a man named Man Kin waiting for you on an uber motorbike…”. I went and found the man who said “Happy Birthday Mr. David” and handed me an uber-eats bag with six Mrs. Fields muffins inside. I walked inside as he rode off and just could not stop smiling. From the other side of the planet she figured out how to do this for me.