Death

It's absolutely terrifying to me. I mean, to the point where I effectively "shut-down" mentally and cycle through a thought process of anxiety, panic, dread, and sorrow until i finally hit exhaustion and have to sleep. It's not neccesarily the idea of death itself, the concept itself is actualy romantic in a mysterious and forbidden sort of way. It's moreso everything surrounding death.

It's the pain, it's the slow decline into it, and it's the mystery of "what comes next?" Is it nothingness? Is it eternal suffering? Is it eternal pleasure? What if it's a repeat without memory? All of those, to me, sound like hell in their own special way. I mean, think about it. Suffering is obvious, but eternal pleasure? If you took all strife out of life what would you get? I'll tell you what, boredom. Unending, cylical, and subtley sadistic boredom.

Nothingness? Well, that's just oblivion. I mean, imagine going from something to nothing, try... you can't, and i bet there's a good reason for that! I bet it's not pleasant! I mean, try to think about what it was like before you were born. About the time before you saw light, felt joy, sorrow, anger, pain... anything. Yeah, you're probably feeling anxious now, right? I know I am!

Now, reincarnation without memory is perhaphs the most merciful of the options, but also not desireable. I mean, to get to suffer through life all over again without improving upon yourself, or remembering any of this? It all sorta seems pointless, doesn't it? At least it does to me. In fact, every option seems milions of times worse when you consider the fact that reality will ventually "stop". I mean, everything, everything, will eventually be consumed by a singular blackhole.

I'll confess too, I'm mostly curious to see if anyone else shares this fear with me. I assume people must since we've the need for religion and afterlifes, but i suppose that's not the same as my fear. To me religion is like telling someone afraid of heights "don't look down" and expecting them to no longer be scared.

Furthermore, it's my beleif that it peope fully beielved in an afterlife thanks to their religion that they'd be 100% okay and comfotable with dying, but yet people still try to cling to life for as long as possible. They cling to it even if it means suffering. That's something that baffles me even more than simply having beleif in a religion, is to choose the pain of life over the peace of an eternal heaven.

I think most people use religion as their coping mechanism with death, and for those who aren't religious (myself) must be one of three things; spiritual in some other way, absolutely terrified of death (like myself), or completely psychotic in some regard (not medically, I'm not trying to insult anyone.)

I mean, you've either got to have your own personal reservations about an afterlife, be terrified of the nothingness, or first have absolutely no care or value or even regard for your own life in order to thus be okay with nothingness.

How do I cope? Honestly, I don't think about it. I tell mysef a white lie like "but ghosts exist" or try to use science such as "energy doesn't just disappear, and that's what we are..." but it doesn't work very well, just temporarily.

Perhaphs it's just extreme nihilism mixed with overwhelming despair, or the product of living in a world where all the knowledge I'd need is in the palm of my hands. Regardless, one thing is certain. An idle mind is the devil's workshop, as long as "devil" means "an extisential crisis" haha. (See? I can make jokes too, now lighten up will ya?)