Letter to inner peace

Dear inner peace,

4 years ago I began pursuing you. That night I experienced an event that would change my life. That night I died. As I floated above my body, and watched the doctors and nurses work to bring me back, I felt an incredible peace. I had a great acceptance that all of it was finally over, but before I could move on, I heard a woman’s voice. “It’s not your time yet little one,” she said. “Just a little longer.” Suddenly, I was back in my body, gasping for air. I screamed, “let me go, let me go!” and a nurse told me I couldn’t go home, I had just died. Little did I know I was crying out for that peace I had felt being dead.

I spent six months trying to come to terms with what had happened, and about why I was still alive. How does an atheist who commits suicide make sense of the experience of life after death. I finally decided the only way to move on was to seek something I never sought before, something bigger than myself.

I started looking for you in all the wrong places, like so many other things in my life. I sought you in broken religions and philosophies, in things that had caused me so much pain in my life. I wondered if I would ever find you, I wondered if you even existed, I wondered if you were worth it. In my darkest moments I wondered what “just a little longer” really meant.

I remember the day I first glimpsed you. It was the day I stopped reading the ideas of others and started finding myself. There been so many sleepless nights and many tears, and yet every day that went by, I was closer to accepting that you are real.

As I look in the mirror at myself today, I see a woman who is exhausted from pursuing you, and yet I have to smile at her. I look into her eyes and she tells me it was worth it, that she is worth it.

I hope that I never truly understand you. I hope that every time I define you, I challenge myself to look at you again. I’d like to believe that you are not a thing to obtain but a journey, and it’s a trip that will last the rest of my life.

I’d like to end by saying I thought about that night I died many times, and maybe I will never understand. I asked myself who that woman was that spoke to me, whether she was an angel or a loved one who had passed. I’m left feeling like that woman was me, calling me back, and just a little longer means the rest of my life.

Love,

Asa