Thanatophobia

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🖤