I've always been slightly morbid. I don't know - maybe it's the family in which I was raised, but I've never considered death or destruction to be taboo. It's something to ponder realistically, but not to stress over. Basically, it's a natural part of living, so you just deal with it. I've never had any great reverence for it and I'm not afraid to talk about it, to actively engage the idea of death. However, lately, I've been freaking myself out thinking about death all the time. I even wrote my screenplay about it.
Being home lately I've thought a lot about my parents' mortality. My grandparents are visiting and they spent all day yesterday going grave visiting (omg, that sounds so funny to me. but honestly it's what they did). They visited my grandfather's father, his brother, and then they visited my uncle (my father's brother). "How the hell could you spend all day in the cemetery? It's depressing and it makes no sense. They're dead!" - my mother complained to me when I got home. I kind of see her point, which is why I want to be cremated, but at the same time, it's nice to know that someone would come and look at your grave after you're gone. But, that's neither here nor there. What concerns me most is my own mortality (ha - how selfish of me!).
I know, I know - I'm 22 and I'm young and I shouldn't think about death, but ever since my pulmonary embolism, something has been different about me. When you come so close to death, when you are actually put in a position where you CAN die, everything else flies out the window. As a kid I'd never really been scared of death. I wholeheartedly believed in reincarnation (still do) and so I figured that death was another portal to a new life. Which is easy to believe in the abstract, but when you're clutching your chest in the hospital fearing that at age 22 you're having a heart attack, that thought isn't so comforting. I thought I had gotten over my fears after my sickness, thought I'd mastered them. It's been months since I've cried myself to sleep, fearing I'd never wake up. But now, all of a sudden, I feel that fear again.
I ride the Long Island Railroad to work every day and I have one hour there and one hour back to ponder all sorts of things. After I had a resurgence of pain, I remember I wanted to rush home and write a note. "If I have a stroke and I become a vegetable. Please kill me. Seriously. DNR. Pull the plug. I don't want to live like that." I even contemplated saying those words to my mother, and honestly, I would, if I didn't think she'd freak the fuck out. But I still feel like I should say it to someone, so I'm writing it here.
I'm going to go to the doctor this week or next, but I don't know who it's appropriate to talk about these fears to. People tell me not to worry, but that's impossible. Not when every headache, every searing chest pain that causes me to stumble, every sharp pain reminds me of being in the hospital, of being told that I'll have to be on medication for 6 months to a year or maybe even a lifetime. Not when I know that had I not gone to the doctor, I most surely would have died or suffered extreme lung damage, etc etc. And so, I am still afraid and there's nothing I can do. Nothing but try and take care of myself and live my life to the fullest. I mean, as my mother likes to say - we're all dying anyway. It's just a matter of when.
