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Trigger Warning - Death
You know what terrifies me?
Everything.
Well, just about everything, but mostly death, or the various ways of dying painfully.
Arm chopped off and bleed to death? Ouch and long ouch.
I’ve heard your brain keeps thinking after you’re decapitated. I wonder if the brain’s pain center goes off line with no pain signals and you just think, “How the hell did I end up on the back seat of the car?”
So, when does shock kick in and shut down the brain’s ability to register pain? I don’t know, and that terrifies me.
No matter what I’m doing, it seems I doomsday the hell out of it.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” I ask myself. While driving my mother to her first doctor’s appointment after her open-heart surgery, my answer was, “We could get into a car accident.”
That thought lasted a millisecond, before I told myself, “No, that’s not the worst that could happen. The worst that could happen is that my mom survives a double bypass, only to die in a car accident while I’m driving.”
Of course, that wasn’t the end of my doomsday spiral. “No. You could both end up with your guts hanging out by the side of the road, alive and unable to even touch her hand to try to comfort her.” (A painful and terrifying way to die. Eventually, I would have died from my injuries.)
That is as far as I got with that one. My brain went on to wonder how much pain I have to be in before my brain decides I’ve had enough. All while being diligent and gripping the steering wheel with all my might.
I was watching a movie where a man was hanging underneath a glass pool about thirty stories up. The tightness in my lower belly rose to my throat. (Let’s call that a panic-wave. I get them all the time.) And I knew it was fake. The guy really wasn’t hanging on the underside of a glass pool, though the pool actually exists. Why would anyone build that? It’s a death trap, IMO.
I pictured the man’s device failing and him plummeting to the ground. Then, of course, I wondered what my last thoughts would be if it was me falling. Would I think about the wonderful things that happened in my life, or would I think, “Fucking figures. Will my death be on some 1000-ways-to-die-type show?”
It honestly doesn’t matter what I’m doing.
Showering – I could slip and crack my skull on the tub.
Eating – I could choke. Dying from that is no joke. It’s terrifying.
Walking – Getting ‘kidnapped’ and tortured to death—but not for a really long time.
Sitting – Heart attack. With every bite of cheese or peperoni, I picture gunk clogging up my arteries. (My mom did just have a double bypass for this exact issue.)
Sleeping – Here’s a good way to die.
I prefer to die in my sleep—as most people do—but that’s not what it’s like for most of us.
Like it or not, most of us die in some kind of pain. And that terrifies me.
Have some kind of weird, terrifying doomsday thinking? Share it in comments or email me. I want to know I’m not alone.
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