Content Warning: suicide
When I was 17, and looked approximately like this, I had a friend, who I also slept with, but can hardly call a boyfriend, who told me he had Hepatitis C. When I asked him what he was going to do about it, and about his lifestyle that had brought it on, he said “This is my life. I chose it. Maybe I’ll regret it one day, but for now, this is who I am.” We were sitting on the street outside a bar, late at night and I felt this moment of realization, that really seeing him meant also letting him go. He died less than a year after that night.
Sitting with ideas of “nurturing life” and “not killing” got me thinking that maybe we avoid killing not because we respect the intrinsic value of someone/something, but because we fear the consequences. And when we take killing into a more wide meaning, things like interrupting or not listening to someone, or avoiding our own emotions, or holding a boundary that is painful to hold, are we nurturing life when we avoid these kinds of killing? And when a loved one decides to die, are we nurturing their life by seeing their suffering fully and allowing them to make a decision, or are we contributing in killing them? Seeing the hurt we create and taking responsibility for it, or allowing suffering to exist without trying to fix it, is that nurturing life?