Friday, May 31, 2013

Strange Obsession with Death

I'm only 27 and already I'm preoccupied with the prospect of death. It makes sense though. I've lost a lot more people than a lot of my peers. First person close to me I lost was my grandma on my mom's side, whom I had previously seen almost daily, when I was 8 and a year later I lost my grandpa on my dad's side. In fact, before I reached 27 years old, I had lost 3 grandparents, 3 kids in my graduating class had died prior to graduation, 2 childhood friends to suicide, and probably most devastating, oddly enough, losing my dad.

When I was a teenager, I used to live in fear that my dad was going to kill us in the night. Wasn't too far out of the realm of possibility. He had tried to kill my mom a couple times in a drunken rage. I used to have nightmares where he would cut all of our throats while we slept before starting the house on fire or shoot us all. One particularly bad night, my mom made me hide the guns in the house because he had threatened to harm us with them. To this day, I don't like guns in my home and I'm not comfortable around them.
For some reason, I never thought I would live past 25. I was convinced I would die either at my father's hand or by some weird disease. I ended up living at least 2 years past it, hopefully with many more to come.

Mortality is something I am constantly aware of and it saddens me. And nothing seems to make it go away. Knowing that my dad is gone makes me realize that I am the next in line. His generation will pass, then so shall mine. Every single person I've ever met is going to die. There will come a time where they won't be in my life anymore, or perhaps they will outlive me. Either way, There will come a time when we all pass away and nothing will ever stop it.

I'm scared of death. Anyone who tells you they're not are either lying or haven't truly considered the possibility of it. We are not immortal and personally, I don't believe there is anything waiting beyond this life. Our consciousness is our brain. When we die our brain dies emitting no more thoughts, emotions, or experiences. How could there be a conscious afterlife?

I truly hope I'm wrong about the afterlife, because I would like there to be family and friends waiting for me to come to them and join them. It's a lovely idea, but it sounds like something we make up to make death seem less scary and less permanent.

I love my family and friends and hope that we all have a long and happy life together. To life.