Tag: Death

Thanatophobia

Some thoughts about a fear that I have.

I haven’t been feeling well for the last couple of days, and whenever my body is “out of balance” it seems that a little bit of my sanity goes with it. There’s just something about illness that makes me hyper-aware of my own mortality.

I am very much aware of the fact that we are all going to die at some point, and it is not the actual dying part that gives me anxiety (although I’m not particularly keen on that idea either), but it is knowing that one day I just won’t be here anymore. All that’s left will be whatever I leave behind, and the memories of the people around me that are still alive.

And when I think about that, I also start to think about what it is that I would be leaving behind, and the goals and dreams I want to achieve before the day that I leave.

This can either go two ways. The best-case scenario is that it makes me extremely motivated to get shit done, but the other scenario (which is the one I find myself in too often) is an overwhelming fear of not being able to get to it all. Fear of being at the end of the road full of regrets.

And then trying to wrap my head around that someday my thoughts and feelings will just turn into nothing, it turns into deep thoughts that I can easily find myself lost in.

Another aspect of death that scares me is the lives of all the people I love and myself to be taken away by someone else’s hands. We look at how the climate is changing, how the earth is getting fevers and getting angry, and most of all there are leaders with access to atomic weapons who shouldn’t be at a position of power what so ever. Looking at the state of the world when I’m already in a bit of a fragile place mentally, it can easily send me into a dark spiral of fear and sadness.

If I sit around and think about it for too long, I will eventually end up with a full-blown panic attack, and then end up isolating myself for a day or two to kind of reset my own brain. This is why I’m unable to watch movies about the end of the world. The sci-fi versions with aliens and so on are totally fine, but the ones that focus on plagues, the death of the earth or atomic war, it sends my mind into a very dark place where I don’t want to be.

The world is a strange, wonderful, and utterly scary place. I fear it at times, but I fear losing it so much more. I fear leaving it because I fear the ceasing to be because that is all I’ve ever known.

What I’m trying to say is that I often find myself scared, and embarrassed to admit it. So here I am, facing a personal fear by admitting one of my biggest fears.

Thank you for taking the time to read through my rambling of dark thoughts🖤

About Growing Old

When you think about your own future, do you think you will grow old?
I asked a couple of my girlfriends this question out of curiosity, and because I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years.

Why?

Because in my mind I have a tiny voice that constantly tells me that I won’t get very old. I have no idea where this is coming from. My family in both sides have grown quite old, there’s been minimal to no terminal diseases and I live a pretty healthy lifestyle. Still, this tiny voice constantly reminds me of the fact that I should enjoy the time right now because I might not have that much time left.

It could be a result of the world we live in, where we see the environment rapidly falling to pieces because we fail when it comes to taking care of it, or maybe my body and mind already knows something that I am not aware of yet.

I have no idea.

But this is a fear and a constant reminder that I’m living with. Maybe it’s totally irrational (and I do hope that it is), or maybe it will make perfect sense. The point is that none of us know, and that’s the reason why we should always try to live our lives to the fullest ❤️

I was thinking about death…

I know that sounds overly dramatic as a title, but there’s really no other honest title that would fit this post. 

missing-you-honest-quotes-about-grief-deep-grief-deep-love

This week my son lost both a great grandmother and a grandfather (on his father’s side) with just a little over 24 hours apart. This would be the first time that he was to lose someone (other than pets) and I thought long and hard about how I wanted to break this news to him. 

And the thing about thinking long and hard about death is that I feel in no way any wiser about the subject and it did by no means make it any easier to talk about. 

At the age og twenty-seven I find the subject of death hard to comprehend and I can even remember feeling overwhelmed by the thought when I was at my sons age as well. Life and death is such a vast and difficult subject with all its imperfections, beauty and struggles. To think that it will one day be over is very difficult for me to think about, and whenever someone I know passes away it is a reminder of the fact that we’re not going to live forever. I haven’t really made up my mind about what I think happens to us after the ticker stops to tick, but that’s okay. I would rather focus on the time I have here now than using time and energy to worry about what comes after. What if it’s nothing? Just a big void of nothing? Just the thought of that scares me a whole lot if I’m going to be honest. 

So how do one talk about death in a healthy and right way? I’m no expert but what we did, was that we cried together and we talked about memories. About how important it is to remember all the good things, but it’s okay to be sad and that there’s no shame in crying. 

It’s hard to come up with wise words about death, mostly because it’s a subject that I myself find very difficult to wrap my head around. 

So this post turned out to be just a tiny ramble of thoughts that I needed to share and I will leave you all with some wise words from Alan Watts on the subject. 

And my final saying in the matter is this:

Remember the good times. The moments that made you smile and laugh out loud. Escape back to those times when everything else feels like it’s too much to handle.