So, I've been having some issues rear their ugly heads again.
It tends to happen around this time of year, but I haven't had this sort of thing happen in this kind of intensity for the longest time.
I have a crushing fear of death. I mean, when I lay in bed at night, I don't want to go to sleep because that is my life slipping away. We are dying every second. I'm not really afraid of death, though there are many terrible ways to die, it eventually ends and you don't have to deal with it anymore. Death it's self never ends. There is no waking up. I'm an atheist, so I don't believe in an afterlife or ghosts or anything. To me, when you die, that's it. All of your consciousness, your feelings, your thoughts, your personality, your memories, your friends and family, all sensation and everything you ever were just stops. There's no blackness, no coldness, no pearly gates or fiery depths, only nothingness. The best way to describe what I think it would feel like is to think back to the only time I've ever blacked out, which was during a car accident. I try to think back to that moment, I try to recall any feelings or thoughts or sensations I had and there's nothing there. There's a blank spot in my mind where something should have been. That blank spot, that moment where my brain just shut off, that moment in time is what I think death is like.
The fear that comes with that literally takes my breath away.
I like to think of myself as a pretty emotionally strong person, nowadays anyway, but when I imagine this version of death, when I can almost grasp what nothingness feels like, I audibly whimper and reflexively writhe in my bed. I don't cry usually, because it's mostly fear I feel, with only underlying sadness. I don't really kill bugs and I feel incredibly bad whenever I see or hear about a dead animal because I feel so horrible that they've been condemned to nothingness. I even feel bad for serial murderers because they, like their victims, have been sentenced to have their existence extinguished. My fear of death dictates and influences a gigantic portion of my life.
This fear is what started my depression when I was younger. I asked mommy and daddy what happened when you die, and they said you go to Heaven if you're a good girl, but when I asked what happens if God doesn't exist, they could only tell me that he does. So I started to ask myself that, and the only answer I could come up with was nothing. Nothing happens when you die, and it's inescapable. I was around nine. I started wondering what the point of life was, if we were only going to die and become nothing in the end. What was the point of making something of myself when it wouldn't mean anything? I started to become suicidal, despite my fear of being dead. Again, I was around nine. If a psychologist ever tell you childhood depression doesn't exist, punch him.
I was sad, I was lonely because my stay-at-home mom had just gotten a job and my siblings had more friends than me, and I didn't know what I could do to help me feel better about death. I no longer believed in God at that point, and that's all the adults would talk about. I would think about running away, just hop on my bike (because at that age, that bike could take you anywhere) and go find someplace better, someplace where all the kids would tell me things would be ok and all the kids had magic powers and went on world-saving adventures.
Then I would think of my mom. And then my dad and my two sisters and brother. I would think of the handful of friends I had made. I would think of my eldest sister talking about how selfish suicide was, how the people left behind had to deal with that loss. I would imagine my mom not being able to move on, sitting sad and alone on the step of our porch and just, not doing anything, asking herself where she went wrong, blaming herself. I would think of the hole I would leave in people's lives, and while that may sound like I'm kind of full of myself, I felt, and still feel, that it's true, and it got me through that time in my life, and the time when I was fifteen where I was the most depressed I'd ever been.
But, even during then, that time when I was fifteen I mean, I was depressed for other reasons and the horrible feeling of crushing fear wasn't really around, it had sort of faded by the time I was somewhere near eleven, and I haven't really experienced the raw feeling of it since. Lately, I've been feeling like that nine year old kid curled as far into my blankets as I can get, trying to shy away from the truth. It's unavoidable, everyone dies eventually, and there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it. I usually solve my depression issues by thinking about them, dissecting them and getting to the root of the feeling, usually causing me to feel better about them because either I discover that it's not that bad, or I at least know what's causing it and I can be calmer about whatever it is. Neither of those happen with this. It is as bad as I think, there's nothing I can do to help it, and I understand perfectly well why I feel this way and if anything, it's made it worse. This is a VERY rare case of "I just need to not think about it", because it does more harm than good.
I finally stopped being depressed just before I turned sixteen. After the intensity of depression I had just gone through, I had worked through a lot of things on my own and with the help of my friends, though I honestly should have gone to a therapist. I reconciled and accepted a lot of things and felt better about myself and the world, except for death. I was too wrapped up n other things to dwell on it much though, and then after that I wasn't depressed anymore, not really, so I continued to not think about it too much.
Randomly, this week, it randomly pops up. My mind would just wander off and bump into it, with little or no provocation. I'm not really going through another wave of depression, and in NO WAY am I considering suicide, but the thought of death and how it's waiting for all of us just keeps rearing it's ugly head. I'm twenty one now, and I still agree with my nine-year-old self: I will probably die screaming in fear on my death bed. Now
Probably a lot of people think it's easy to be an atheist, that we're just cynical assholes who scoff at the world all day.
It's not fucking easy.
I have a crushing fear of death. I mean, when I lay in bed at night, I don't want to go to sleep because that is my life slipping away. We are dying every second. I'm not really afraid of death, though there are many terrible ways to die, it eventually ends and you don't have to deal with it anymore. Death it's self never ends. There is no waking up. I'm an atheist, so I don't believe in an afterlife or ghosts or anything. To me, when you die, that's it. All of your consciousness, your feelings, your thoughts, your personality, your memories, your friends and family, all sensation and everything you ever were just stops. There's no blackness, no coldness, no pearly gates or fiery depths, only nothingness. The best way to describe what I think it would feel like is to think back to the only time I've ever blacked out, which was during a car accident. I try to think back to that moment, I try to recall any feelings or thoughts or sensations I had and there's nothing there. There's a blank spot in my mind where something should have been. That blank spot, that moment where my brain just shut off, that moment in time is what I think death is like.
The fear that comes with that literally takes my breath away.
I like to think of myself as a pretty emotionally strong person, nowadays anyway, but when I imagine this version of death, when I can almost grasp what nothingness feels like, I audibly whimper and reflexively writhe in my bed. I don't cry usually, because it's mostly fear I feel, with only underlying sadness. I don't really kill bugs and I feel incredibly bad whenever I see or hear about a dead animal because I feel so horrible that they've been condemned to nothingness. I even feel bad for serial murderers because they, like their victims, have been sentenced to have their existence extinguished. My fear of death dictates and influences a gigantic portion of my life.
This fear is what started my depression when I was younger. I asked mommy and daddy what happened when you die, and they said you go to Heaven if you're a good girl, but when I asked what happens if God doesn't exist, they could only tell me that he does. So I started to ask myself that, and the only answer I could come up with was nothing. Nothing happens when you die, and it's inescapable. I was around nine. I started wondering what the point of life was, if we were only going to die and become nothing in the end. What was the point of making something of myself when it wouldn't mean anything? I started to become suicidal, despite my fear of being dead. Again, I was around nine. If a psychologist ever tell you childhood depression doesn't exist, punch him.
I was sad, I was lonely because my stay-at-home mom had just gotten a job and my siblings had more friends than me, and I didn't know what I could do to help me feel better about death. I no longer believed in God at that point, and that's all the adults would talk about. I would think about running away, just hop on my bike (because at that age, that bike could take you anywhere) and go find someplace better, someplace where all the kids would tell me things would be ok and all the kids had magic powers and went on world-saving adventures.
Then I would think of my mom. And then my dad and my two sisters and brother. I would think of the handful of friends I had made. I would think of my eldest sister talking about how selfish suicide was, how the people left behind had to deal with that loss. I would imagine my mom not being able to move on, sitting sad and alone on the step of our porch and just, not doing anything, asking herself where she went wrong, blaming herself. I would think of the hole I would leave in people's lives, and while that may sound like I'm kind of full of myself, I felt, and still feel, that it's true, and it got me through that time in my life, and the time when I was fifteen where I was the most depressed I'd ever been.
But, even during then, that time when I was fifteen I mean, I was depressed for other reasons and the horrible feeling of crushing fear wasn't really around, it had sort of faded by the time I was somewhere near eleven, and I haven't really experienced the raw feeling of it since. Lately, I've been feeling like that nine year old kid curled as far into my blankets as I can get, trying to shy away from the truth. It's unavoidable, everyone dies eventually, and there's nothing I or anyone else can do about it. I usually solve my depression issues by thinking about them, dissecting them and getting to the root of the feeling, usually causing me to feel better about them because either I discover that it's not that bad, or I at least know what's causing it and I can be calmer about whatever it is. Neither of those happen with this. It is as bad as I think, there's nothing I can do to help it, and I understand perfectly well why I feel this way and if anything, it's made it worse. This is a VERY rare case of "I just need to not think about it", because it does more harm than good.
I finally stopped being depressed just before I turned sixteen. After the intensity of depression I had just gone through, I had worked through a lot of things on my own and with the help of my friends, though I honestly should have gone to a therapist. I reconciled and accepted a lot of things and felt better about myself and the world, except for death. I was too wrapped up n other things to dwell on it much though, and then after that I wasn't depressed anymore, not really, so I continued to not think about it too much.
Randomly, this week, it randomly pops up. My mind would just wander off and bump into it, with little or no provocation. I'm not really going through another wave of depression, and in NO WAY am I considering suicide, but the thought of death and how it's waiting for all of us just keeps rearing it's ugly head. I'm twenty one now, and I still agree with my nine-year-old self: I will probably die screaming in fear on my death bed. Now
Probably a lot of people think it's easy to be an atheist, that we're just cynical assholes who scoff at the world all day.
It's not fucking easy.