I do not wish to die.

At one point, I did. Half a life ago, I tried. Not with great and fiery conviction, but out of necessity and desperation. I simply did not know what else to do.

I’ve tried again since. This time, without even intending to, I was in a bit of a mess, I didn’t know what to do with my hands, but there was a knife conveniently there.

It didn’t turn out very well that time either.

Since then, I’ve stubbornly dug my heels in, not letting the desperation get the better of me. To avoid the moments when I do not know what else to do.

But now, I do not know what else to do. And the stubbornness in me is kicking in. I guess it runs in the family.

See, I’ve been watching the same stubbornness in my mother. When she got hit with pneumonia fourteen times in a year, which was followed by multi-resistant tuberculosis. She dug in, head down, continued.

When the treatment failed along with her skeleton, it was the same stubbornness keeping pace.

And once again, when she fell down the stairs, shattering several of her vertebrae, keeping her lying down, it was the stubbornness, and the morphine, that got her out of bed. And then out of her chair into a kind of shuffling walk again.

That was until she fell again, and shattered a few more. The chronic pain, dampened only by morphine and alcohol. Not much alcohol though. You don’t need much when you’re barely holding your body together.

I’m convinced that it’s still the stubbornness that keeps her breathing, even after all these years. Because there isn’t much else left.

Days spent in a drug-induced haze, waving into consciousness and futile frustration of being unable to do what you want. Barely able to meet anyone, or see them when she does.

Then she fell, broke her arm in a few more places. And the same stubbornness, morphine and alcohol kept her from getting treatment for another day.

And now I sit here, not quite mourning, but not far away from it.

And I wonder…

Am I too stubborn?

I may not wish to die, but I certainly fear that I’ll be too stubborn to notice when I’ve already died.