The Fear of death

Ever since I was a little girl, my biggest fear was the idea of death, the night terrors that I used to have and still do have to this day, make these fears so much more intense. I can't even remember the amount of nights that I have woken up crying, or the nights that I was unable to sleep due to thinking and so desperately fearing death and all of the unanswered questions. Nothing in this world could ever comfort these thoughts, these are the thoughts that will stay with us for the entirety of our lives, mainly because the questions can never be answered. 

I'm now 21 and I find myself to be just as scared not as I was when I was a little girl. How can you expect these fears to go away when we can't ever possibly answer the questions? It's hard not to think about something that you fear, especially when trying to sleep, when your brain goes into overdrive.

Last night I found myself lay in bed struggling to sleep, with various thoughts coming into my brain, the subject of death screaming to be listened to. I can't help but fear what the world will become once I am done, I fear the idea of being gone, the ides of never being again, no one remembering that I ever was. I can't help but imaging what will happen after that, imagining the nothingness that I will feel…or won't feel. I can't help but hope that there is more to life than this inevitable, I hope that once we die, something else happens. I despise the idea of dying and never existing again, just disappearing into the dark abyss.

I fear oblivion, I fear it like the proverbial blind man fears the dark.

Death has always been a hard subject for me to process, it's hard to understand that this specific part of your future is inevitable, it's always going to happen and there's nothing that can stop this. There is no comfort in the idea of knowing that this happens to everyone, that there is no escaping it, in fact, this just helps to make these feelings so much worse, if I said that it makes my life feel claustrophobic would that sound stupid? This is because it's always around, it's never, ever going away. Thinking about this too much makes me feel physically sick, it sends my brain into overdrive, causes me to think about all of the unanswered questions that are often related with this subject…What happens when I die? What if I have nothing to leave behind? What happens to my loved ones?

If there is one thing in this world that we cannot avoid, it's fears and phobias, whether you like to admit it or not you are probably feared of something and it just so happens that one of the biggest world wide is the fear of death. Death means the end to everything for one individual, the end of everything that they knew, the end of everything that they used to be and everything that they could have ever been.

I've found that there's nothing that can stop my mind getting side-tracked  nothing that can stop me thinking and worrying about this. It's inevitable that once you leave this world, you will eventually be forgotten  everything that you have ever created will disappear with you, is that something we should fear? One of the worst things is not knowing when your time is going to come, not knowing how long you have to live your life. There are so many things that I want to do before it's my time to go, so many places that I want to visit, so many things that I want to experience. The idea of leaving behind something meaningful is wonderful, something that you can live through, some kind of legacy, to me that will be the family that I hope to one day create, my future children. 

Just as much as I fear leaving this world, I fear losing my loved ones. At 21, I have lost my more people in my life than I care to think about. The hardest thing that I have ever experienced was losing my beloved Granddad, knowing that I was never going to see his face again, I fear losing anyone else, I fear the breakdown that will come with that, I fear it more than anything. I'm just as scared of losing my loved ones as they are of losing me.

Spending time thinking and writing about this subject just makes me realise how precious life is, how much we often take it for granted, even though we shouldn't. We should not spend our time dwelling on the idea of dying, or the idea of losing those around us. We need to make every second of our lives count because we never know which moment is going to be our last. We should do what we enjoy in this life, achieve greatness, bring a family into the world and most importantly be happy. We should never let the idea of death take over our lives because it;s time will come. We should enjoy life as it is for what it is and remember that nothing in this life is worth is if you're not happy.

Until next time xoxo