Buried Alive!
Lately I've been struggling with an old fear. I lie awake at night and think in breathless despair about the fact that I'm going to die. I'm a champion anxiety-monger, but I really hate this particular one, because it's completely unsootheable. When I freak out about something like being afraid the plane is going to crash, or about the horrible work deadline I have coming up, I can reassure myself that it's okay. The odds of the plane crashing are pretty low. The work deadline, no matter how miserable the run-up, will soon be over. My odds of dying, however, are pretty freaking high.
I read a cheery self-help book that actually had a chapter addressing this fear. It suggested that you remind yourself that death is important because if we didn't die, the world would be choked with all the animals who have ever been born, stacked up hundreds of feet. And gosh, that would be awful!
Yes, but... I'd still be ALIVE. I could climb up through lots of struggling animals, no problem. And I could sit up on the writhing massand be ALIVE! Not dead. Which seems entirely preferable, to me.
Anyway, I'm just hoping that it will fade into the background again soon. I have a vivid memory of washing dishes at the kitchen sink when I was pretty little (I feel like I was maybe 7, but my memory is far from reliable) and suddenly realizing, for the first time, that I am going to die. I remember looking at my reflection in the dark window while thinking about this, and the horrible sudden hollowness in my belly. It comes and goes, though - I can go years without thinking about it more than glancingly, and then I think about it every day for months.
I wish I were religious. (I wish this often, lately, because it would give me a fantastic way to put the kibosh on Dutch's endless, senseless questions. "Why this is a flower?" "Because GOD SAYS SO.") Even a faint hope of an afterlife would save me a lot of energy and anxiety. But I'm faithless, and so I need to start looking for distractions instead. Like a hobby! A theme is emerging here - I clearly need to pick up the knitting again, so as to distract myself from death and improve my life. I'll get cracking on that next week.
I read a cheery self-help book that actually had a chapter addressing this fear. It suggested that you remind yourself that death is important because if we didn't die, the world would be choked with all the animals who have ever been born, stacked up hundreds of feet. And gosh, that would be awful!
Yes, but... I'd still be ALIVE. I could climb up through lots of struggling animals, no problem. And I could sit up on the writhing massand be ALIVE! Not dead. Which seems entirely preferable, to me.
Anyway, I'm just hoping that it will fade into the background again soon. I have a vivid memory of washing dishes at the kitchen sink when I was pretty little (I feel like I was maybe 7, but my memory is far from reliable) and suddenly realizing, for the first time, that I am going to die. I remember looking at my reflection in the dark window while thinking about this, and the horrible sudden hollowness in my belly. It comes and goes, though - I can go years without thinking about it more than glancingly, and then I think about it every day for months.
I wish I were religious. (I wish this often, lately, because it would give me a fantastic way to put the kibosh on Dutch's endless, senseless questions. "Why this is a flower?" "Because GOD SAYS SO.") Even a faint hope of an afterlife would save me a lot of energy and anxiety. But I'm faithless, and so I need to start looking for distractions instead. Like a hobby! A theme is emerging here - I clearly need to pick up the knitting again, so as to distract myself from death and improve my life. I'll get cracking on that next week.
