I Don't Want to Cease to Exist!
I will turn 20 next month, and looking back, I realize how far I’ve come, yet at the same time, I’m getting closer to death, if I’m lucky enough to even die of old age.
When I was younger, death never really bothered me. I used to joke about it all the time that what if I got randomly hit by a car, dragged by hundreds of birds and dropped to the ground, or died from some absurd, silly cause? I’ve had relatives die before, and somehow it never shook me deeply. Even grief felt like something that passed over me without leaving much behind. I was content, until last week.
That’s when I started ruminating about death itself.
So many questions flooded my mind that I ended up crying myself to sleep, and it continued for days and days and days. I kept searching endlessly: is there really an afterlife? Is there a God waiting to welcome us at the gates of heaven, where we can reunite with the people we love? Or will we simply become fertilizer for the soil, drifting into an eternal sleep, forgotten? That latter terrifies me.
I can’t stop thinking about it. Those thoughts keep piling up, and now I think about everyone in my life. My boyfriend, my friends, my family, even celebrities I admire. I’ve always been an anxious person, but this has made it so much worse.
What scares me most is the possibility that if death is truly the end, then this is our first and only chance at life. And there is so much I want to do. I want to meet so many people, witness different cultures, taste foods I’ve never heard of, listen to music from all over the world, see art that makes me feel alive. There is so much to experience, so much beauty to consume, and yet our time here feels painfully short.
I can’t help but calculate my age, the years passing, and obsess over how long I might have left. Will I make it to 40? 60? 80? Will I even make it to next year? The uncertainty eats at me. And I can't help but envy the young.
And what hurts even more is knowing that someday, the people we cherish most will die too. They’ll become part of our memory, and even memory decays. We won’t be able to see them, hear them, or hold them ever again. It’s so difficult to grasp. It feels like trying to hold water in my hands, only to watch it slip through my fingers.
At that point, I can’t help but wonder: why do any of this at all? Why love, dream, build, and breathe if death will eventually erase it?I am so scared because I want to witness continuous evolution, forever. I want to see what humanity becomes in a hundred years, a thousand years, millions of years. Oh, how much I crave world peace. If vampires existed, I’d gladly join their family. I don’t want to cease to exist. I want to live, and love, forever. I want you guys to live forever too.
If there were ever a chance at immortality, no matter how impossible, I’d take it without hesitation.