Nacho,
I assume your suicide countdown story was written with tongue in cheek for twisted humor (as were my responses), but just in case you were half-serious, I want to tell you an Inspiring Story.
I didn't START living until I was 30. I was bogged down in a thankless job for shit money after working steadily for 15 years (I worked after high school and during summer breaks while other kids were having fun.) It became clear to me that I could work 15 more years and still end up with no money in the bank. I had already tried marriage and discovered it wasn't made in heaven. Plus the only girlfriend I could find at the time was an plump Amazon who was AC/DC.
In other words, I was a Loser following a path to Nowhere. This often kept me awake at night, as you can imagine. One particular night I didn't get any sleep at all. I just laid in bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about my crappy job and my Amazon girlfriend and my nearly empty bank account. I couldn't take it any longer. That morning I went to work and turned in my two weeks notice.
I had no intention of looking for another crappy job, but with very little money, I also had few ideas about how I would survive. I was on the island of Maui, so I figured I could always pitch a tent on the beach and catch fish to eat. That was the extent of my plans for the future. But I didn't care. My completely unfulfilling life had pushed me beyond the terrors of uncertainty.
The strangest thing happened at work while I was finishing my last two weeks. All but one of my co-workers treated me as if I had lost my mind. It would have been hilarious if it hadn't been infuriating and also sad. I learned something about them I had never known before: they were scared shitless -- frightened little people selling themselves for a piddling paycheck. Even weirder, I scared them by bailing out of what they considered a safe and secure situation. As if I was a threat to the narrow existence they inhabited.
My one true friend at the newspaper was an older woman who lived a simple island lifestyle. She laughed at the bizarre reactions of the other co-workers and told me to ignore them. Through her connections, she found a FREE house for me to live in, saying: "I don't want to think about you camping out in the rain."
Unbelievably, the free house was located in Nahiku in the part of the island I loved the most -- the tropical rainforest on the remote eastern slopes of an extinct volcano. I packed everything I owned in my old Jeep Cherokee and drove down the narrow twisting road to My New Home.
I lived for 3 years in Nahiku. The free house lasted 6 months and by that time, I was making enough money to afford to rent my own house on 3 acres of land which I homesteaded. I found the rental through Portuguese friends I had made -- in a place where vacant housing was virtually impossible to find. Things just fell into place for me in Nahiku. Whatever I needed to survive seemed to come out of thin air miraculously. The Hawaiian locals taught me how to fish, hunt and farm in the old style. This was quite unusual because locals don't take to haoles very often.
I developed an entirely different view of life in Nahiku which has lasted until now. Life is not meant to be a veil of tears, that comes from the prisons we put ourselves in. Years after I left Nahiku, I also learned this startling secret: it wasn't the place! Although Nahiku was certainly beautiful and unique, the same thing could have happened to me Anywhere. It was my ATTITUDE at the time. I kept my mind open to new ideas and new modes of living and I reinvented myself.
To quote Thoreau, the most inspirational writer I ever read: "Life answers to our conceptions of it ... If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind and pass an invisible boundary. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex and solitude will not be solitude nor poverty poverty. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost -- that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."
So, Nacho, it's far from too late to take the plunge and reinvent yourself. You're only 31, which (believe it or not) is still young. The best years of your life could start today -- if you want it stongly enough. You only live once, but once is plenty if you do it right.
Hell, if I died tomorrow, I wouldn't have any legitimate reason to bitch. I've had 31 years of more freedom than most people ever enjoy. I was a poor kid from Michigan who finally cut the birth chord to Normal Society and became an Autonomous Adult at the age of 30.
