The Life Worth Living List

Content warning: this post discusses suicidal ideation.

The will to live has never come naturally to me. Not since I was a child, at least. Some people seem to have this intrinsic motor that just keeps them going, even when shit sucks. I’m in awe of that, frankly. Couldn’t be me. One horror too many and my brain is advocating for skedaddling. I have a lot of shame about it, actually.

In the 13 years since my first attempt to depart the mortal plane, I have worked hard to find reasons and strategies to stay. And for a time, my deathsong (as some advocates call it) quieted. But lately the global horrors have seemed to multiply daily, from the genocide in Gaza to Covid denialism to the war on trans folks to mass deportations….I could go on. And my personal life isn’t the foundation of stability and joy I’d like it to be either. I know I’m not alone in struggling right now.

Enter this list. I think it would behoove me to list things every week that make life worth living. Life worth living is a phrase I first heard while doing Dialectical Behavior Therapy, as building your LWL is a core goal of that program. I want to add 5-10 things to this list weekly even if I sometimes have to reword similar entries (I am not allowed to just list my cat Bug every week, even if that’s fundamentally true).

While regular writing and sharing of other sorts has been challenging for me due to my need to be authentic fighting my self-judgment towards vulnerability, I hope that this will become a series. I also hope that items on this list will, as often as possible, mean something to all of us, not just me. This is not a diary, this is an offering.

So without further ado, let’s get to this week’s things that make life worth living.

1. When something (or someone!) you have grown, raised, reared from such a tiny little thing to something larger and older, is flourishing. Even if you feel you’ve hardly done anything at all.

2. Ear hair. On critters and also on elderly humans. It adds charisma, methinks.

3. A box that you repurpose (or got specifically) to hold items that are precious to you.

4. Skin on skin, your own or someone else’s. Smoothing and brushing and warming.

5. Making eye contact with a photograph of someone you love, who maybe you haven’t seen face to face in a long time.

6. The way people, much like sunflowers, turn their faces up to be warmed by the sun.

7. That ridiculous trinket you bought with the excuse that it’d ‘bring you joy’ and actually does bring you joy every day.

I want to share what in my life inspired 1, 3, and 7: