I’ve been thinking about death a lot, over the past year or so. My own, the death of others, the concept of it, the weight or weightlessness of it.

I’ve already touched on some of this in prior posts, but it has a tendency to loom heavily over all of us, to some extent. It might be one of the few experiences that unites everyone who has ever lived, and who ever will live.

When I was younger, I thought I was going to die young. In retrospect, this was a morbid comfort blanket and imaginary safety net. I was terrified of the future and didn’t think I would be capable of handling it. Somehow, the idea that I would die before needing to deal with it made things seem easier to face. If I failed, I would just die before I had to face any of the consequences. I would escape my circumstances one way or another. There was a cutoff date in mind, but my life got better and it came and went without notice.

I didn’t realize how selfish and childish this mentality was until I grew older. It’s easy to glamorize and fantasize about our own deaths but difficult to swallow the thought of it happening to someone close to us. We want our lives to be easy and painless. We want to exist and leave before suffering too much and be remembered fondly. Our own deaths are easy (so we think) but the deaths of friends and family are an unbearable inevitability. Someone will have to leave first, and we never want to be the one left behind.

This flirting with death as an abstract comfort came to an abrupt stop in October of 2023, and was further reinforced in June of 2024. I had a heart attack. I was only 27, fairly healthy, with no history of smoking or high cholesterol or blood clotting. I’ll spare the gory details but I had something called a MINOCA, which few people are familiar with.

I’d been having them for several years up until this point, but wasn’t taken very seriously when I went to the hospital the first few times. Eventually, I stopped bothering to go and would stay quiet about them when it happened. My brother insisted on driving me when it happened this time, and I finally had the proper tests conducted.

I think back to the times I lay wide awake at night with those exact symptoms, heart pounding and chest feeling strange and heavy and painful. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I decided that I would sleep. Whether or not I woke up was out of my hands. Perhaps it wasn’t the worst way to go, if it was serious and it did kill me. I was alone and in college for most of those. I couldn’t afford the hospital visit and didn’t have anyone to rely on for help. My family was far away, and I kept them at arms length at that time, for various reasons. My close friends might have been able to drive me, but I would have felt guilty begging for a ride at 3 or 4 AM for something I assumed would be waved off as nothing. There’s a chunk of my heart which is just scar tissue now, from the years of letting this go on. I am angry that I was not taken seriously the first time that it happened, but there’s not much that can be done. In June, I almost died due to (likely?) unrelated medical circumstances, and had to spend several months gradually recovering from severe anemia.

There’s a difference between the abstract fantasy of death and actually having it knock on your door to collect. The will to live comes in fast once the choice seems out of your hands, and life seems worth living again. Death is a luxury only when it is a choice. “No, wait. Please. I want to see my old friend one more time. I never got to finish that project. I want to play that game I’ve waited years for. I want to swim in the ocean again, and see the river I grew up next to, and finally do that thing I always said I would. Please just give me a little more time.”

I felt so angry at my body, and at the circumstances which led to these incidences. It’s so easy to glamorize the idea of dying in this abstract romantic sense. But when life is good, death is an unwelcome guest. There’s a disgusting, directionless helplessness and rage. There’s no one to blame and very little that can be done beyond taking the pills handed to me and hoping maybe this time something will work and the problem will finally go away. I missed out on a lot of things because of these incidences. Sometimes still I find my life grinding to a halt when the symptoms act up. The cold is hard on me and makes my chest hurt. I find myself weak and frustrated sometimes when the anemia gets bad again. I used to fence, but its been difficult to engage in more physically strenuous activities when I’m not sure if my life will freeze again.

Regardless, I want to live so badly. I want to make things and go on hikes and push the annoying realities out of the way. Its like I spent so many years hating myself and creating a make-believe scenario of a tragic and beautiful end. By the time death arrived to collect, I no longer wanted it. Perhaps my life wasn’t worth collecting when it fit in the size of a small bedroom and rarely crept out of it. Now that I have things to do, and plans for my future, and so many people that I love so dearly, its a little more enticing to snatch away. I want to fight off death with crowbar and lock my doors tight to keep it out. I want to run away in the middle of the night and change my name and hide from it forever. I want to travel and spend all my time in the sunlight and try every little hobby and creative pursuit and weird local event on every weird little flyer I find. In person, by nature, I’m a shy and awkward person. I struggle to speak and make eye contact. I tend to be a bit of a recluse, and its difficult to leave my house. But the thought of losing these things sort of kicked me into trying my best. I’m clawing myself out of the shallow grave I dug for myself. I cannot let my fear and comfort become a tomb.

I got a tattoo a few months ago. It was one I’d wanted for many years, prior even to these incidences. An hourglass, in the process of being turned over. (Note to self: insert a photo later.) Time runs thin. Something ends. Maybe a disaster happens and your life falls to pieces. But you pick it up and start again. It seemed fitting to finally get it done after all of that. Its not the end yet. I have to keep going. Turn over the hourglass, and get back to work. I will live, one way or another.

If I was pressured to make a moral lesson out of this, it would be: Just live, please. Live and keep living. If you want to die, please know that there is no beautiful death. There is no such thing at all. Make your life beautiful instead. Run from whatever is causing you misery and chase after what will bring you joy. You don’t have much time. Seconds tick by without notice, and years start to creep into their place. Anything can come in and snatch it away. So please, make it count.