Blog: Mortality

Trigger Warning - Content includes death and suicide themes

Recently I have been in an interesting mood. A mood where I’ve been question things like, life, existence, who I am and who I am going to become. I don’t think that there is one main reason that has been keeping my mind on this topic almost every day, mostly a concoction of multiple different happenings that have occurred in the past as well as in more recent times. An example of this is a question that one of my good friends posed to me the other day. It went a little something like this, “what are your feelings towards death and dying.”

To be honest that is a pretty interesting question to just randomly ask your friend over text at eight at night, nevertheless, I did answer them in a long winded fashion as usual but, i’ll try to provide the answer in a more concise and thought out way in this post. So to put things short and sweet, “death is sad and scary,” that’s the short and concise answer. However, let me kind of explain my thought process to the whole thing.

Read on if you like, it will be pretty long winded, but hopefully interesting to some audiences some way and maybe even help some people.

So death and dying has unfortunately been something that has always been in the back of my mind, ever since I was a kid I would say. More specifically when my Grandfather on my Father’s side passed away and I attended his funeral at a pretty young age. I didn’t really know my Grandfather too well, but I do still remember crying all over the place during and after the funeral. I don’t know if that really counts as childhood trauma or something like that, but nevertheless I’ve been thinking about death ever since. I would constantly wonder what happens after death and wonder where I would go when I eventually die one day. I would question whether heaven is real and wonder what the point of living was if I would just die and lose all of the progress that I made while I was alive. So like why am I even alive?

That last point has stuck with me especially heavy for the past couple months. “Why am I alive?”

“What’s the point of trying to make all this progress towards bettering myself? Why put myself through the stress of living and striving for greatness if that greatness is going to be taken away from me one day? Especially since I don’t even know when that day is. It could be today, tomorrow, Christmas Day, like it could be any of those days. Why not just end it all and call is quits? To be honest it would probably be easier that way.”

Constantly these thoughts would run through my mind almost every day, and honestly thinking about death is scary. Not knowing what’s going to happen to you, when it’s going to happen to you, where you're going to go after you die. That shit is terrifying. Like I don’t want to die, i’m scared to die, but there is a part of me that would prefer to take my own life rather than live a stress induced life with nothing to live for.

I still remember the day that I went into a doctor’s appointment five years ago meant for a seasonal checkup, but came out with a paper that stated “medium risk” (suicidal risk) on it with a list of therapists attached to it. To this day, I still have not contacted one of those doctors, maybe I should have, i don’t know. The months and years following that day I constantly questioned who I am and why i’m on this Earth. Managing to mask the sadness and fear I held inside on the easier days, and breaking down in my room alone on the harder days. That’s probably why I’m so good at customer service, all those years of masking my emotions really paved the way for my career in customer service.

Anyway’s that pessimistic view on life that I used to have has changed quite a bit since those harder years of my life. I feel as though that the “medium risk” synopses that I was given back then has now changed to a more “low to no risk” reading. Having spent a large amount of time thinking about death myself and thinking about my own death for years, I think that my feelings towards death have really changed.

I may not know what happens after death and I may not really know if heaven, hell, or God are real. However, I do know that death isn’t just “sad, and scary.” It mostly depends on the way you look at it, but right now in my life, I see death as a motivator of some sort. Something to make me strive for becoming a better person and a better friend. I don’t mean to become a better person to ensure my spot in a heaven or to get brownie points with God when I die, but to become a better person for those who will remember me when I finally expire.

That is the one thing that I know is concrete when you die. I am going to become a memory, and I know that at least one person that I love will be holding onto that memory. I would also prefer for people to remember me as a decent person. I want to be a memory that will make people smile. Of course, sadness will come with my death, but I want to make sure that there is a least one good part of me that will help those who miss me to smile and laugh when they need it the most. So that’s where I am at with death and dying.

So to those of you who are struggling the most with your own mortality, I understand what you are feeling and what you are going through. I want you to know that I am proud of you for still being here on the earth and I want you to understand how strong you are for continuing to live in the world to day. Thank you for staying with me and listening to me rant. I want to leave you with my finalized quote and answer to the question that my friend asked me the other day, i’m not sure if it will help but I hope that it sparks you into thinking differently about your own mortality. Thank you for reading and i’ll see you again soon. Peace, Love, and Positivity.

“Death is sad and scary, but life is too sometimes and that’s okay.”