cw: death
One of my biggest fears as a child was dying. The idea that as your last breath escapes your lips, you are sent into nothingness, the world closes in around you and creates a void where you unconsciously float for eternity. I used to pray to God every night, begging him to let me wake up in the morning. I didn’t have any rational explanations as to why I thought I would die every night but the simple idea that something could happen between sunset and sunrise petrified me.
As I’ve grown up I find it kind of funny how my perception of death has shifted and warped. I still fear death but for different reasons now. I fear my heart-stopping and leaving my bodily existence a mere shadow that fades away when the sunsets, leaving behind a life of unfulfilled potential that people look at and pity. And yet, as drops of insecurity sneak their way into my mind and beg me to make something of myself, I pray I don’t wake up.
My eyes open every morning the same, quickly and with urgency. Not because I am excited to start the day but because panic has surged my body into being alert. Vivid dreams fill my mind at night, ones that leave me disoriented and confused on what’s real and what’s in my head, this mayhem of my mind occupies the first few minutes of every morning. Immediately after, I am struck with the crushing reality that is life. It may sound morbid and depressing but after the hundredth time you’ve woken up to your anxiety using up all of your brain capacity by 8am, you start to dread the living aspect of life.
It’s not that I’m physically exhausted, I have enough energy, artificial and natural, pumping through my body to last a lifetime, it’s that my brain is working overtime. It’s trying to make sense of every obsession, every intrusive thought, every insecurity, and every fear that rushes the gates of my brain the second my eyes open. Living feels like a chore, one that’s at the bottom of the to-do list you just completed and all you want is to take off your shoes and drift into sleep. The pressure of needing to complete a full life has left me unable to live.
It’s a deadly cycle, one that I don’t really know how to break. Another cycle, another circle that I’ve found myself in. This constant rotation around the same mistakes makes the chaos of life feel monotonous. It almost makes me yearn for the days of all-consuming fear of death, but I don’t know if that was any better than this.