Ive come to terms with the fact that I might be obsessed with dying.
Not that I want to die, but that I prepare for it at every turn.
I think about how depressing it would be for my parents and friends if something were to happen.
God & Man
I keep getting headaches, I told my friend.
Why do I keep getting headaches?
There has to be something wrong!
She made me list off my symptoms and assured me that I probably didnt have a brain tumor.
A couple of weeks!
I lamented to my friend.
Ill probably be dead by then!
She seemed a lot less convinced than me.
Im not sure Id go that far.
Have you gotten enough sleep?
Of course I hadnt gotten enough sleep I stayed awake all night because of theheadaches.
Plus my memory has been terrible lately, I told her.
I keep mixing up my words.
And now that I mention it, I dont think I had this mole on my arm last month.
Ive come to terms with the fact that I might be obsessed with dying.
Not that I want to die, but that I prepare for it at every turn.
I think about how depressing it would be for my parents and friends if something were to happen.
I havent always been so focused on the macabre.
Just a few years ago I thought myself invincible.
I liked to get drunk and tempt fate.
Id climb up tall metal cranes in the rain and hitchhike with strangers and walk alone in dark alleyways.
(Have you tried walking through them during the daylight instead?
one friend asked me once, shaking his head at my stupidity.)
Something could happen anywhere, anyway.
Why should I be scared?
Before I obsessed over my own death, I guess I obsessed over others.
I thought a lot about what would happen if I lost a loved one.
I imagined the funerals of nearly every person I met.
You feel so secure in your life, dont you?
itd say mockingly as it pulled the rug out from under me.
Maybe Ill go first, I think, and I cant decide if thats a relief or absolutely terrifying.
I can sort of pinpoint when these obsessive thoughts began.
When my friend and I backpacked through Europe last summer, our trip took a dark turn in Prague.
NAZIS IN AMERICA, one headline read the day after we decided on the concentration camp.
By the end of the week, Id read three think pieces about how World War III was inevitable.
The journey home made me so tired I slept for three days.
It made my memories seem brighter, prettier, despite all things horrific that had surrounded us.
Even she couldnt offer what I was looking for.
Maybe its just anxiety, she said.
Sometimes if it gets too bad, you might start having physical responses.
Ive heard of things like that before.
Its amazing what can happen if the mind is convinced of something.
So I decided to stop going to the doctors.
How do you rid yourself of thoughts that have preoccupied your mind for months?
I talked to my friend whod studied neuroscience and told her I was probably just being crazy.
Hm, she said thoughtfully.
And what do you think might be making you anxious?
Dying, of course.
It always came back to the dying thing.
Okay, but anything else?
Its funny, because Id never really thought about it.
But maybe it was more than that.
Maybe it was bigger than me.
It was as if shed cracked a dam inside me and everything came spilling out.
I told her about how sometimes I read the news and immediately burst into tears.
And that was just the children!
How can life be so unjustly cruel to some and let the rest go scot-free?
I still think about that conversation a lot.
I also think about how my father asked me once, Whats wrong with your generation?
Back in my day, mental illness wasnt the same as it is today.
He couldnt fully grasp how the world had changed.
The first time he ever had in-home access to Internet, I was already born.
You get on Twitter and read something from an actual Neo-Nazi.
You check your local news site and talking heads deliberate the possible overturning of Roe vs. Wade.
Notifications pop up on your phone informing you of a new shooting every week.
Facebook is all political opinions from family members who have decided they are experts.
What can you do to change that?
my friend had asked me on the night Id opened up to her.
The thing is, I dont have an answer.
Maybe I never will.
I attempt to unplug on weekends.
I dont go on social media so much anymore.
Instead of swiping through my phone at night, I spend the few hours before bed reading a book.
Sometimes I just close my eyes and breathe.
It took a week for them to finally subside, but I havent had them since.
The world may still be burning, but I dont think Im dying anymore.
