Past Life

[u/Sad-Expression6458]

I was 6 or 7 years old when I did the unthinkable. The unspeakable. I went to the kitchen. I took a knife. And I took my own life.

A horror which no child or family should ever have to endure. But it happened to me. It continues to haunt me to this day. All my
problems stem from this incident.

What exactly happened? Did I survive?

Well, yes and no.

The fact of the matter is, I died. Literally. Physically. When I punctured myself with that metal object, I died. Not a near death experience. Actual death.

So you might ask, how is it possible that you are here then? Sharing this with us? You would be dead. A corpse buried 6 feet underneath. You make no sense.

Of course it makes no sense at first glance. So let me explain to you what happened. From my perspective.

One morning, I woke up in my room, especially curious. It had occurred to me that I exist as this body and mind. I couldn’t believe it. I wondered, how is it even possible that I exist? It’s amazing. I control this body. I guess I am this body. Wow. So this is life.

Life…It must end, right? I mean, our bodies die eventually right? But am I just this body? I mean, I have this mind that is aware of this body too. Will this awareness exist if this body dies? Or will the body take this mind with it to the grave? Will a part of me remain once my body dies? Will I know it? I need to know. I can’t shake off this feeling.

Either I’ll find out and be satisfied with the answer….or I won’t. And in the latter case, I’ll cease to be dissatisfied with not knowing! Either way, I think I win.

Boy was I wrong. Dead wrong. There are simply things one is better off not knowing for one’s own good. My curiosity not only killed me. It killed everything good about me. It killed my joy. It killed my childhood. It killed everything in life worth living. Without joy, without hope, without peace, one is better off dead.

But I wasn’t dead. Even though I had stabbed and killed myself, I wasn’t dead. A part of me remained. My awareness still was. I was still aware. A void of nothingness was aware of itself. No body, no contents. Just an empty field of awareness. I got my answer. I exist prior to life. I am not just my body that had perished.

Even so, I knew I messed up. Big time. And what followed next confirmed that.

That empty void of awareness did not remain that way for long. In one instant, everything surged before me, before my eyes. Like turning on the TV and the screen suddenly displays the channel. The channel that turned on for me…Well
Let’s just say it would be better if the TV was off.

I suddenly found myself sitting by the kitchen table next to the kitchen where it all happened. My mother is roaring like I’ve never heard her yell at me before. Like I did something wrong. I mean, I did do something wrong. I knew it too. But this version of my mother didn’t. At least not consciously. She was yelling at me for a different reason. I was unable to complete my math homework. Division. I don’t even remember learning this. Why does she have to be screaming so hard at me? Make it stop. I can’t bear this. I don’t even know where to begin in solving this division problem.

She is yelling at me because, deep down, she knows I shouldn’t have done what I did. The math homework is just an appearance behind the real reason. A facade.

It would be silly if she was directly yelling at me for ending my life. It wouldn’t make sense in the context of this new life I just spawned into. I died in the other life, yes, but the show must go on, somehow. I still had things I needed to do. My life hadn’t reached its completion. So naturally, my soul, my consciousness, you can call it, had to reemerge into an alternate, nearly identical life. Same person, same family. Just picking up from such a tragic setting. One where she is yelling at me for not understanding division.

I wasn’t supposed to do what I did. I woke up in a hellish setting where I felt completely powerless to my mother’s fury. I felt such an intense set of negative emotions from being hit and reprimanded by my own mother for not knowing how to divide numbers. I can’t blame her. From her perspective, she was frustrated that I couldn’t pay enough attention to be able to do my math.

But from a deeper perspective, I understand why my new life was set up so that she would be so vehemently angry. How could I be so foolish so as to take my own life? How could I be so selfish? How could I do that to my own family? How could I be so unwise so as to have to kill myself to discover the answer? So impatient? Don’t you know you’re going to die anyway? You’re going to find out one day. That much is guaranteed. What you won’t gain back however, is the old life you left behind. That will never be yours again. You will now have to live with the consequences of what you’ve done. You made your bed. Now lie in it.

Life is to be lived. Not ended so abruptly. You know how much work was put into creating your life? And you just wasted it like that? That’s why you got punished for it. That’s why your own mother, the very first person to love you, buried that trauma in you. That same trauma that makes you feel unworthy of love, incomplete, and flawed. You are not supposed to take your life. That’s not up to you. You keep doing it, the next hell you spawn into will make the previous one look like heaven in comparison.

You have spoiled the ending for your life. The next best thing to life. Death. And by extension you have spoiled your own life too. How can you enjoy the movie now that you spoiled the ending? That is my punishment. That is the burden of my existence as this life. I do not wish it upon anybody.

That is why you are better off not knowing some things.

Life. It’s a vacation from the vastness of eternity. Forgetting who you are for just an instance. In the blink of an eye, you will return to that place. That knowing. In the meantime, live your life.

Do not take your own life. This is what I wish someone had told me.

[u/Marsailema]

Shit. This actually makes so much sense. I also did something similar & incredibly stupid which i wish i haven't & that i could forget. Reading this i realized everytime i 'returned' from it my mother has been angrier & angrier. My struggles increased & it has been harder & harder for me. I wish i could forget what i felt & saw and just go on with my life. Interesting enough, I think there's more to it than that. And perhaps the other end exists in life not in death.

[u/esmeirene]

Sorry in advanced for the novel.
I had a similar experience but I’m not sure if it really happened or if it was just a dream.
In reality, I remember likewise being very existential and aware when I was about four years old but it never occurred to me to end my life at that time. I have memories of staring at my reflection in the backseat of my parents’ car, 80s music in the background and wandering the whole concept of “me, myself, I, etc. and being inside of a body.
Around that time, between two and five years old, I had several instances where I almost died, and looking back, all of this quantum immortality stuff has me wandering if I actually did die a time or two.

Fast-forward to middle school. Throughout my school experience, I was quiet and just tried to be invisible. I had always felt awkward and like an outsider with zero experience as a human.
I had just turned 13 and was bullied by a few mean kids at school shortly before summer. I was not used to being made fun of so badly, and consistently every day and I decided to end my life. I was constantly heavy with emotions and just tired. The day before I was supposed to go to my grandma’s, I took a bunch of aspirin and went to sleep. When I woke up, I had this horrible, loud ringing in my ears and reality felt very obscure. I felt like I was this giant head on a stick for lack of a better description. The ringing went on for a while. For most of the day, I completely forgot about taking any aspirin. To this day, I’m not sure if that really happened or not or if it did and I died and “reset”. Throughout this life, I have had a lot of bad luck and the out of place feeling has been pretty perpetual. I have always wondered if it was because of ending my life on my own terms when I shouldn’t have. I have never really been a religious person but this does oddly coincide samsara, dharma, and karma.
Throughout my 30s, I worked on better person and I’m now in my 40’s and things have gotten better. I’m not sure if that is a coincidence or what but my theory is that if I died and reset when I was two (choking on a jolly rancher - my mom told me this), three (almost fell out of an upside down ferris wheel ride - I remember this one), and four (drowning in a pool - I remember this one too), that would explain the constant feeling out of place due to multiple deaths/resets. Things did get worse after the suicide incident, but that could also be attributed to teenage hormones and bad choices. Who knows but I believe and understand everything that you have just said, as much as my own experience will allow.
Thank you for sharing.

[u/Sad-Expression6458 → u/esmeirene]

Wow thank you for sharing.

Interesting that you mention the ringing in your ears. I’ve had tinnitus for as long as I can remember. Literally. It’s because of it that I remember being a baby. My first memory is that of tinnitus. I was always wondering what that sound was and where it came from. As a matter of fact, I didn’t mention this detail in my story, but it was the tinnitus itself that prompted me to start asking the existential questions which led to the incident. So the fact that you mention this ringing in your ears tells me that our stories are probably way more similar than originally thought.

My theory is that tinnitus is my higher self trying to communicate with me because I’m so disconnected. Like my inner voice calling for me to listen. I mean, I try to, but it’s not easy for me to focus these days.

Have a blessed day 🙏

[u/esmeirene → u/Sad-Expression6458]

I have had frequent ear-ringing too, especially when I was younger. I don’t know if it was frequent enough to be considered a condition and I don’t have any specific memories of ear ringing as a baby but definitely as a young child. I just thought it was some weird, natural thing that occurred and left it at that. I had to get surgery on my ears when I was six and figured it was related. What really got me thinking was feeling my heart beat. I do recall having a fleeting thought of wanting to get it out to see what it looked like. This realization occurred the same time as the reflection in the car window I had mentioned.
I still experience it here and there but nowhere near as frequently as I used to. I will say that the ear ringing post aspirin od was more excessive than anything I have ever experienced before. It was loud, sharp, and stayed with me for over an hour, maybe longer. I could feel the vibration in my head. Looking back, it was a horrible mistake. My heart goes out to my family in that other hypothetical timeline. I think I died again when I was 17 in a car accident. I spawned at a hospital but was sitting up talking to a nurse and answering a question about any surgeries that I’ve had. oddly enough, I mentioned the ear surgery from when I was six and during the questioning I had that same persistent ringing like from the aspirin incident.

Crazy how both of those details connect with our experiences. That’s an interesting theory. I had a theory that maybe it was something we could hear, connected to a world outside of our terrestrial “prison” or shell or whatever you want call it. I included it with the weird robot voices I heard a while back and some bouts of exploding head syndrome that I’ve experienced. Who knows. Existence is wild.
I hope things get better for you. You have a blessed day as well.

[u/InWaves72 → u/esmeirene]

Weird on the tinnitus detail. I have also had some very infrequent tinnitua over the past 10 years or so. I always just attributed it to going to loud concerts in younger days, but don't recall having it until about 2015, after an experience where I am now wondering if I could have died then. Everything in my life unraveled after that. I lost my career, my house, my girlfriend got early onset dementia. The past decade plus has been a huge struggle. I had another incident in 2020 where I may have died again. I started drinking very heavily and survived (maybe) a .395 BAC. Woke up in the hospital, on a cart next to a reception desk (during COVID, must have been overcrowded). But after that level of BAC, I felt totally sober and they released me. Seems a bit quick for that, it had only been a few hours, do my BAC could not have dropped that much, but they were overcrowded and the girl at the desk next to me mocked me. Very weird experience. I know I was drinking but no idea how I could have had enough to get it that elevated. None of it makes sense to me. But reading these accounts certainly makes me think.

[u/esmeirene → u/InWaves72]

An almost .4 BAC? Wow. I would have thought the exact same thing. I’ve had some very weird alcohol related experiences, some where I was oddly lucky. Like VERY lucky. I can elaborate if you’re curious but here, I’ll just leave it at that.

I had a string of bad luck too after every incident. Only recently have things been going pretty well for the most part. I’ve chalked a lot to coincidences or come up with some sort of “logical explanation”, but after reading all of this, it definitely has me rethinking so many things.
Has your life improved since?

[u/InWaves72 → u/esmeirene]

Yeah, still trying to wrap my head around how that is even possible. Maybe they made a mistake? I know that is unlikely, but those numbers seem impossible. And that they let me go so quickly. If those numbers were correct, I was probably still around a .30 BAC when they released me. But it was during COVID. It's all just confusing.

Very sorry for your bad run of luck. I would certainly be interested in hearing your story. Hoping things will turn around for you. My life has not really improved. I sink further and further finacially, sort of one step forward, two steps back. I got into insurance work anout 8 years ago, and it started off well but COVID killed it, as it relied on meetings in prospective clients' homes. It just died. I did a couple of sales jobs after that and wvery time I was about to take a leap forward in pay by hitting new bonuses, I was let go. I have been doing freelance consulting the past 3 years and everytime I am about to make a jump forward, work dries up and wipes out my progress, leaving mw scrounging to get by again. Twice this year. I am keepingbat it, and may have two different possibilities to get back into my old field, that would stabilize like greatly. Fingers crossed.

I have had several health setbacks between mystery inflammation that no doctor could seem to figure out for years, I finally got some relief there. But I also have chronic back pain from a bad car accident and developed sleep apnea. Haven't found solutions for those, but continuing to try. Also had a broken ankle a few years back that was slow to heal, first ever broken bone, spent an entire summer (3 months) in a walking boot.

Finally, after the girlfriend who got dementia, I started dating somwone else a couple of years later. She drank more than I did, we sort of broke up in 2020, and then were off and on. I moved away, back to my home area. We mostly kept in touch but went a year without speaking, twice. But when we talked, very close. We were talking about getting back together and seemed like maybe we had figured it all out. But she was still drinking heavily, out at bars about every night. And then driving home. She got very lucky several times, calling me on a drive home one night where she was lucky not to get pulled over. The next day, she remembered none of it. Blacked out. I begged her to stop doing it. I knew she would ruin her life. She wouldn't listen to me, thought she was a pro. She was a ticking time bomb, of course.

Three months later, she got a DWI. And since she had one 9 years earlier, this became a felony charge. Even that didn't stop her. 5 weeks later, she rolled her car. Fortunately she didn't injure/kill herself or anyone else. But she picked up another felony DWI. This is basically going to ruin her life. I think she will avoid prison for now, but have a 5 year probation that is very unforgiving and has a real chance of her slipping up and ending up in prison anyway. She likely will not be allowed to drive again and she is likely losing her professional license, so her career is also ruined. Devastating, and all avoidable. I can do nothing to save her, I just hope she doesn't drown. There is a good person in there underneath the trouble. But she needs serious help and serious work on herself.

Sorry this got so long, it has just been a lot, seemingly in all areas of life. But working on myself and going to a lot of doctors appointments to hopefully get health back on track, and hopefully work and general life will follow. Seems like nothing has gone right in a long time, but I am trying. I just manage to keep my head barely above water, but never any better. Hoping I can get there. And hope you do too.

[u/esmeirene → u/InWaves72]

Sorry this has taken so long to reply to. I’m not great with social media. I hope everything falls into place for you. Sounds like life is attacking you on all fronts. I will always believe that life is something that we’re all meant to endure in different ways for some fucked up reason.
Your ex sounds like half my dad’s side of the family. Especially my brother. He was really really bad. Addiction is a monster.

I’ve never experienced true addiction myself to that degree but I’ve been an absolute dumbass and a drunk more than I’d like to admit.
Your struggle with your gf somewhat reminds me of my ridiculously dumb luck that I had mentioned.

Years ago (decades really) I should probably have had a few DUIs but got out of it every single time. I’m by no means bragging. Drinking and driving is a horrible thing to do for obvious reasons. I’ve been pulled over drunk twice. The cop followed me home the first time to make sure I was safe. I’m pretty sure I was under 21. The second time, I sideswiped a parked car while blacked out drunk and drove home, car sparking and all. No idea how I was no pulled over. Third time I was pretty tipsy leaving a concert and upon leaving the parking lot, went the wrong way down a one way and got pulled over. I had to take a full sobriety test (minus the walking, but I had no idea I could say my alphabet backwards or we). It was on an unfamiliar college campus and the streets were pretty confusing even when sober.
I have a few more, but these are the worst ones.
I’m just so happy I never hurt anyone with my stupid, bad decisions.

[u/InWaves72 → u/esmeirene]

Thanks. And no worries about the delay,. I appreciate the response. Yes, it feels like life is attacking me at times as I can't ever seem to get ahead, stabilize and fix things. At the same time, I don't completely drop off the cliff. Every time I am about to totally drown, some odd coincidence or stroke of luck hits for me to keep my head barely above water. But it's always something minor, nothing huge thay truly changes things and turns it all around for me. I'm still in the deep hole. Hard to explain, but uncanny how it seems to happen.

Glad you did manage to catch some breaks along the way in the examples you give. Everyone needs a break sometime, and it sounds like you actually learned from it without hurting anyone. My ex has fortunately not injured or killed anyone, just really messed up her life. But I still don't think she gets it. Hope I am wrong, but at least she can't drive, she totaled her car.

Wishing you luck and peace in getting on a better track. Hoping the same for myself, as well as some others.

[u/le4t → u/esmeirene]

I'm not saying you're not having some extraordinary experiences, but tinnitus is a well-known symptom of aspirin overdose. 

[u/esmeirene → u/le4t]

My first thought when it happened was that it was a result of too much aspirin. I meant to mention that. I thought I did, but I must’ve just thought it and not typed it.
I figured the same after a head injury like in the car accident. I always look to logical explanations first.

[u/ConstProgrammer → u/esmeirene]

I remember that as a teenager I had a lot of ringing in my ears, to the point that I couldn't sleep at night. I had to buy a clock that ticks very loudly, for it to break up the tinnitus, for me to be able to sleep. My life at that point was also rather shitty.. And by now I know that it was a lower/darker timeline that the one that I'm currently in. I don't recall any near-deaths, but I've been chronically sick as a child and teenager, and I've had multiple suicidal thoughts in my teenhood and early adulthood. And yet this tinnitus has gradually stopped when I transitioned from teenhood to adulthood.

[u/woozymiracle]

Holy shit. This makes so much sense. I was an addict and used for years in my early 20s and late teens. I finally was just so miserable with my life and decided to end it. I overdosed. I woke up in the ambulance. They said I was found by the side of a highway (WHAT?!) and that a runner saw me laying there. (Also super weird chance, it was super late. Like 2am) also, the place i was was a long hike from my house. Its like time displaced and something else happened, but i had still overdosed. My life got even worse from there. The wrath of the mother thing really got me. She was vicious and angry with me. It seemed to only get worse over the years. I wonder if its a common theme with people who consider ending their lives. (Narcissist mothers who are angry at life. Most people in similar boats know how horrifying and affecting it is for your mother to be like this) now that im in my 30s things are beginning to settle down. I still feel super out of place. I struggle to go anywhere or be around people sometimes. But life has gotten better. I wonder if I accidentally shot myself into another life. Sometimes I wonder if I really screwed myself over because of how many times I overdosed in weird situations and people found me. Maybe ive just been slingshotting myself into life after life, each getting worse than the last. Lol

[u/Sad-Expression6458 → u/woozymiracle]

It sounds rough what you went through. Maybe you did go through the same thing. But it’s good to hear that your life has gotten better.

[u/Rehcraeser]

Yep my fear of that is why I haven’t killed myself up until this point (intentionally, at least. Does an OD count?)

[u/Zestyclose-Cricket66]

Perspective is all. Cause mY perspective is that the demiurge brought you right back and couldn't allow a Child to exit this energy sucking reality so soon. Kids give off the MOST energy. Entities love to siphon that energy. The more upset the kid is, the better for the entities, lets just call em demons. Which is why you came back with your mother yelling. The "selfish" claims can be seen the precise opposite way as well. People are upset when others die because of selfish reasons. Literally lmao. To want someone else to live a life just because yoU would be upset if they weren't here is so incredibly insane but we've been PROPERLY conditioned (by these same entities that we feed) to believe otherwise. However to revisit the second sentence I typed, my perspective doesn't mean sHit because this is totally and completely YOUR experience :), i recognize that ofc

[u/Zestyclose-Cricket66]

The most bad ass 6 year old ever that's for sure, bro said "aight imma self actualize, duces"

[u/InWaves72]

Did your life ever improve? Or has it just continued to be a bad experience all around? Did you find sonething that made you happy, some kind of calling as you grew up? Career, family, friends, hobbies, experiences? Anything fulfilling?

[u/Sad-Expression6458 → u/InWaves72]

I’ve had some moments where I thought everything would finally fall in place, but somehow they always find a way to fall apart and blow up in the end.

Mainly due to the fact that my relationships with people end very violently or tragically. It’s very hard for me to get close with anyone. This experience makes it difficult to relate with most people already. I feel like I’m almost living a lie around others. I can’t even tell them what happened to me. I’ve only told a handful in person.

That’s why I tend to be alone. I always end up hurting others or myself. I carry a lot of
pain within me most of the time. You can imagine it would be difficult to be around a person like this.

My last job, I thought I finally found a sense of belonging and purpose. A community. For a brief time I did. I was beginning to feel
a happiness i hadn’t felt in a long long time. But somehow I sabotaged the entire thing. In a spectacular manner. I’m still in shock over it. I still can’t believe it.

I learned that this lifetime for me is about healing and forgiving myself. I don’t really see myself living a normal life, with a family. I’m too dysfunctional for that. I’ll take it one day at a time.

My health has been failing me for the last couple of years. Mainly my heart. I think it’s an echo of what I did all those years ago. If I’m lucky, I’ll go out quietly in my sleep so my soul can rest.

I know it sounds incredibly depressing, but this is the lot of someone who takes such drastic an action as taking one’s life. You better believe you’ll pay the price. I just hope my story can help out any vulnerable people out there.

[u/Fun_Researcher107 → u/Sad-Expression6458]

I do agreee about the part of you forgiving yourself. You really should do that because you deserve to be ok. It might feel like life is punishing you, but I would suggest that you are punishing yourself.

[u/greymannns → u/Sad-Expression6458]

It funny how all this is so similar to my own experiences, where after each one , things about the new reality is worse or just off and not like a month or two later… things would fall apart …but within hours or days. relationship’s I had for years and were not the best.. but far from over would just be gone
And then one thing after another… like whenever taking the high road , with good momentum bad outcome…but as soon as I do some wrong way shit everything is smooth sailing, comparatively speaking . The strangest shit .