Please help, I don't want to live anymore

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You're very welcome. and I appreciate the nice thank you.

When I was in 7th grade (age 12), my dad began taking us to a strict, doctrinaire church, and the youth group was even more fervent and doctrinaire. When I was 13 almost 14, I fell for it, became a very fervent Christian. When I started having doubts about a year later, it was very highly traumatic. I finally left and made peace the summer after my 9th grade year (age 15 and 1/2). Okay, so now logically I am atheist-agnostic, but I really do my own thing and draw a lot from zen and some from Native American spirituality. I do exactly what the baptists say you shouldn't which is to pick and choose (my church was evangelic friends, which was even more fervent, in fact we kind of looked down on the baptists as lukewarm).

So, even now, I was recently thinking that forgiveness can be temporary, including forgiveness of self. That forgiveness is primarily a feeling, completely contrary to what most religions teach. That however I get there the feeling might work for a while, and provvide a touchstone and the touchstone may often work. But I might remember the original wrong or the original way I let myself down, I may again feel angry/blocked/sad. And that's okay. In zen-like acceptance, I don't want to fight against that. If I'm being overly optimistic, I can say it gives me another opportunity to practice the art of forgiveness, well, I don't know about that.

You know, I'm thinking what might speak to you the most is a book by someone who has lost a spouse. They might address some of the very good issues you are talking about, which I don't think are fully addressable by any religion or philosophy, and certainty nothing that's any kind of pat answer.

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Can't tell you what to do or not to do, just offer that its really never too late to turn what's inside around. The outside world kind of just is what it is.

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Well, since we at WP often talk across each other anyway, I'm willing to keep talking for a little while longer unless you'd rather I didn't.

And if a book helps, so be it. Maybe keep it a little private, maybe sometimes not even that. For example, I read an autobiography of Renee Richards when i was younger and got a lot out of it. No, I'm not transgend. But I do know what it's like not to fit in, in vague ways, and so the book spoke to me on different levels. And I think in part because of this book, I am more confidently accepting and in favor of people who are transgend.

What about the idea that the person was about as authentic as they were able to be at that point in time, and that one cannot make someone more mature any more than I can pull up a plant by its roots and make it taller?

I'm glad to be able to help if only a little bit. And I think the way you share and describe things is generally very good. And if it occasionally sounds a little disjointed, so be it.