“Silent Comprehending Of The Ending Of It All”

My whole life after 25 is me living in anticipation of my death despite my constant attempts to distract myself from it.

And it’s inevitable… death.

But I’m constantly hyper aware of it.

I never have even a moment anymore where it’s not on my mind. The fear of it. The heavy awareness of it. The weight of it. The pain of it.

I’ve come to a point of awareness of self and life that I can’t escape it. Can’t turn from it. Push away from it. Hide it from myself. Can’t avoid it. Abandon it. Can’t be distracted away from it.  It’s almost as if the fact and unavoidable truth of the end of it all, crawled inside my brain, my soul, my lungs and heart, grabbed tightly to my nerves and chest cavities and just made a nest and will never leave.

Can’t leave. It embedded itself within the empty parts of myself and made itself a home.

And if I’m to live like this.

If I’m to live at all….

I need to learn to be ok with this inevitable existential reality that’s been unable and unwilling to leave my consciousness.

I’m scared. Yet I’m somewhat relieved? I’m in a constant state of panic, yet o have a slight sense of peace with reality?

… the contradicting feelings sometimes make me believe it will only get worse. I can’t “positive think” my way out of this and even if I can I don’t think it’ll help in the very last moments of my dying breath and that floods me with a panic that I don’t think any human in my life can possibly understand. And if they can, it likely is not as long as I’d hope…

Not as constant as my existential overwhelm.

And even if someone fully understood those feelings and thoughts of mine, even if we shared said overwhelm… I’d still feel it and be a part of it more consistently. As it has been for a while now.

How does one overcome such deep agony in life? Is it even possible? Is it inevitable that I will be stuck like this til I die from such stress like my 7 week fetus did? Because during that time, my pregnancy, I felt the existential overwhelm to a degree nobody around me knew how to comprehend or understand let alone help me through…. My stress, I fear, was the reason my body couldn’t help sustain that life….

What is a life like this meant for but high blood pressure and a dead child?

Can I feel a sustained amount of peace in my life before I die? During my death? Am I allowed even that?

Am I cursed to worry about it forever? Can I overcome? Will I? Can I become at peace with the inevitable? Will I? Before I die?

Instead of telling me to try and get over it I want the people in my life to tell me they get it.

That at times they understand this kind of feeling. Even if it’s not constant. And when those moments come to them, that’s when I’d like to hear from them. A phone call. Text. Email… it’s those conversations I need in order to become ok with it as the years go by.

If I’m granted even that.

Suppressing it only makes it worse. And I have no idea how to explain that vocally to the ones I love.

That sadness and melancholy are more than an aesthetic or song genre choice for me, it’s engrained into who I am. The poetry I write. The songs I sing in the shower loudly. The books I read. The majority of movies and shows I choose to actively watch. The stories I’m drawn to. The lyrics I write, listen to and read. The people I collect, I see it I their eyes and witness it in their lives. It’s in the niche of my social media. My photography. My self-portraits. My cooking. My style. It’s who I am and how I love. How I fight. Cry. Panic. React. It’s how I live.

The existential is buried inside of me. And I need to try and stop looking at it as a permanent parasite and more like the melancholic blessing that it is.

My memories before I take my last breath, mean something right now and that’s how I’ll view my life from age 30 and onward.

https://open.spotify.com/track/30y5OpD8TPAru2wsyZDD4S?si=rMzBH0I-Rn21qeTRKz4f0A&utm_source=copy-link

(Originally by Bo Burnam)