Just some thoughts about death
It's funny, right? I have this ignorance towards death, but yet, at the same time, I am terrified of dying. I act like nothing bothers me, but nobody knows that I feel this way. I read something a little while ago about how we, as a species, have a feeling of immortality - in that we feel indestructible. It's a difficult concept to explain, but it is essentially that we can not fully comprehend death, so the idea of something ending our life is foreign to us. Typically, we only experience our actual fragility when we have a close brush with death, such as a car accident or the loss of a close loved one. Now, the reason why this is relevant is because while I am scared of the idea of dying, I don't fully understand it. I can't foresee what comes after death - I simply can not imagine what comes next. Whether that is the ceasing of all functions that I have come to know, or whether we actually do move onto some other plane of existence as is believed by most cultures and religions, I do not know.
I don't have anyone to speak to about this, because my girlfriend is more scared of the end than I, and unfortunately, none of my friends are really fit for lengthy discussions about the afterlife. I have work friends, but they aren't close enough for me to speak to them about this kind of thing. So, really it's just me and this laptop. It's the idea of nothingness that gets me. I suppose this is the thing that most people are afraid of. And that's just it: it's the idea that I can't understand. We fear the unknown, so it's natural to be scared of death. right? I can not comprehend the idea of complete nothingness, and that is what scares me the most. Even the idea of being stuck in some kind of purgatory does not bother me like the idea of everything just coming to a stop bothers me. All I know and all I understand is condensed into the space of time that I have been conscious, which is twenty-one years so far. This makes sense, obviously, because unlike others who claim that that they have recollections, or memories of a previous life, I am aware of nothing before, maybe, my third birthday.
I remember when I was ten-years-old, and I was in my bedroom at my parents' house, and I was sobbing. I can't recall exactly what it was that made me start thinking about it, but that was the first time that I fully comprehended my own mortality, and the fact that one day I will no longer inhabit this earth as I do now. I realised that I will eventually die, and I burst into tears. Before that, I had felt invincible, as I had never thought about the end. My older sister came into my room and asked me what was wrong, and I told her that I was thinking about death. She misheard me, and thought that I was scared of being deaf. That brought a very brief break from the sadness I felt as I thought it was funny that she didn't get what I was saying. She didn't really have much to console me in terms of words, but she offered me a sketch book to draw in to take my mind off of the subject, which I happily accepted. For a time after that, the concept of being dead did not bother me so much.
When I got a little bit older, and because of reasons that I won't mention right now, I became depressed, and this lasted for four or five years. During that time, death felt like it could be a respite. It wasn't that I wanted to die, it was more that I didn't care either way if I died or if I lived, and the thought of dying gave me some small comfort, because it would have stopped the sadness. I did self-harm, but I didn't try to take my own life. I don't feel like I'm completely out of that slump, but at the very least, I am able to feel happiness properly again. Now, because I can enjoy life more, I've become scared of dying again. It's not even like I feel that I have a lot to live for. It's not like I'm doing a lot with my life, and I don't enjoy everything that I do, but I don't want to just stop existing. I spoke with somebody today at work whom was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he had been told that he had eighteen months left to live. This guy just called me to update some details, but then he mentioned about how he had recently been told that he actually has only twelve months left. Now, here’s the thing, right? This man threw it out there so casually, as if it was nothing. He was incredibly grateful for the small task that I performed for him, and he genuinely seemed like a really nice person. I don’t know if his manner was just a front, or whether he, himself, had come to accept the end, but either way, I just felt so selfish. Like, who am I to be sitting here bitching about how I don’t want to die, when this guy will only be alive for another year?
I don’t know, I guess that I'm just scared of what comes next. I'm scared of growing old. I'm scared of no longer being relevant. I'm scared of being forgotten. I'm scared of nothingness.
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