I tried curing my fear of death some years ago and ended up writing a story about the actual physical manifestation of the Grim Reaper coming to my birthday party. He was an excellent guest but his smalltalk was forced.
The thing about writing is that it sneaks up on you like a sly motherfucker.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know I was terribly scared of the concept of death, oh… I know that. The words coming out were much more precise though. I subconsiously cocooned myself around morbid memorabilia, curious gadgets and creepy accessories just so I could be better acquainted! I shit you not, all of that just streamed through my writing, I wasn’t even thinking about it. And you can casually throw a glance around my house and my most prized possessions and that much is clear.
Yet I’ve always been peculiar even as a child, before knowing about death and that it can actually happen to mortals, even to people you know. I was practically in love with mummies and the funerary practices in ancient Egypt. Up until that point, it was just childish curiosity.
Now, things get harder the older you get. I’m not afraid of my own death. It’s mostly a terrifying feeling of knowing that the people around me will die eventually and I’ll be there to selfishly bear the brute force of the hit. Because I’ve already done that once and honestly it took a lot out of me, since my coping mechanism is shutting down and pretending that everything is okay. Feeling numb is scary.
Well, I’m not that numb anymore, despite the fact that my face begs to differ… but I’ve come a long way. Everything is better now and I’m honestly in a very good place after working on myself for a couple of years.
But really, it’s all waiting to happen all over again, isn’t it? Why is the natural process of life so damaging if it’s supposed to happen anyway? Shouldn’t we as humans have evovled into accepting things easier and faster? I wish there was a way to celebrate passing through *insert your preferred representation of moving on to a different realm after death*, having a laugh and remembering the good old times and that’s it.
But that’s not it. We are shaped and carved by these momentous events, such as they are and frankly, I didn’t sign up for this.
I see a lot of lost potential in cases like this, I feel robbed and haunted by what-could-have-beens. And it’s just not with the people close to me, it’s with everyone I admire. There could have been much more… and in a selfish way, there could have been more for me to have learned.
Death is a universal idea, a timeless currency that makes the world go round but how long does it take for our universe to resume into normalcy?
SOME REMORSE 