Death is inevitable; that’s something most people have come to accept. Sometimes, we have days when we’re snapped into reality and feel like we’re suffocating after the terrifying realization that we’re not going to live forever. But when we are in the right environment, that fear slowly fades away. We remember there are things in this world that make us feel alive and remind us that death is just a bittersweet ending to the beautiful life we are experiencing in the present moment. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case, even when we have things to be grateful for.
A portion of us, no matter how fulfilled our lives are, never truly feel like we’re complete. This is especially seen in people who are lonely and have no one they can converse with outside their family. They have so much time alone that it allows their mind to look too deeply into the world around them. Awareness, once considered a mature way of thinking, becomes a curse. We grow envious of the people who can look the other way; we find it unfair that they can live in the moment without a constant reminder that they will die one day. To us, living feels like we’re on a time limit.
When you go to therapy, you’re typically told that what you are feeling is nothing to be ashamed of. A therapist’s job is to help us control those emotions and realize that issues like anxiety are causing us to see something that isn’t there. But when it’s something that is affecting us psychologically because we know it’s set in stone, what’s the solution? We’re not walking on eggshells; we’re not afraid of the things that cause death, rather, the subject itself. Our life, as we know it, can disappear in a matter of seconds, and no one knows what comes after.
That fear, depending on its intensity level, can cause so much dreadfulness that we reach a point where we’re unable to talk about it. We know the moment we go into depth, we’ll experience a type of panic you’d see in someone who is actually on the verge of death. In that brief moment of hysteria, the world around us feels like an illusion. Our minds convince us we’re inside a nightmare that is forcing our heads to split apart. When we recover, we forget it even happened for a few days until it haunts us again.
Author’s Note
Ironically, despite its horror-inducing environment, October has many days that focus on mental health. Although there is no such thing as a day of awareness for people who are anxious about death, I thought it’d work perfectly for The Chomp’s October Issue. My goal here in this essay is to show people how learning about death has negatively impacted me ever since I found out about it as a toddler. But, more importantly, I want people who feel the same way to read this so they know that I understand how exhausting it can be, and that hopefully, we can find a way to cope with it together.
