Thanatophobia: My Struggles with Death and Acceptance

The fear of death is inhabited me for as long as I can remember. Some of my earliest memories are riddled with fear of my own mortality. My younger experiences with it consisted of week-long spurts of terror that the afterlife was not real and that when you die you go absolutely nowhere. I would cry and look for affirmation from my mother that this was not true, and I remember her reassurances were extremely unconvincing and I continued to live in that fear.

 I was merely six years old when these conversations took place; I am now 27.

I would live in that fear, sometimes in sheer terror, crippling anxiety, literally afraid to move at some points and that was how bad it got. Living in constant awareness of my inevitable mortality, so scared that my heart felt as though it was beating out of my chest. So scared that many times I felt as though my fear would send me into a cardiac arrest that would lead to my death, further exacerbating my fear. This would go on for any time from one week, to even 3 months, until gradually it got to the point that whenever I had a thought about death I quietly accepted it and then moved on with my day.

I have lived with this pattern for 21 years. 

This is how it goes for me: 

My periods of remission where I live in acceptance and divorced of fear can be as long as a year. Possibly more--Its hard to remember and also hard to define. Surely, in my times of peace there were nights where I was reminded of my inevitable death, but did not dwell on it for more than a minute or so. When I say I went a year without fear, I specifically mean that I went a year without prolonged preoccupation of my fate to come.

So this summarizes how ideal with my fear of death. It's not the healthiest, and at times I feel I can't escape it while at other times I feel I have overcome it until it presents itself again so robustly.

Fast forward to March of this year:

I was listening to the radio in my car and I heard a segment on NPR about death. It was an odd segment, saying it was unconventional would be an understatement. The segment was about, a club of sorts, of parents who normalize death to their infant to toddler children. I heard parents explaining details of murders, suicides, in terms that a toddler could understand. And for some reason, that triggered powerful feelings inside of me.

And what I mean by that is that I have never been so scared of death in my life. It was 10 times worse than it has ever been. As late as August, I still lived in this constant fear. To this day, the process of going to bed at night is taxing. It has gotten better as the months have gone by, but every night without fail the same thing has happened to me:

I will be laying down and drift off into sleep, listening to a podcast on my phone because if I try to sleep in silence, I do not even want to think of the terror that will ensue. I will drift off to sleep with things that make me happy in the background playing on my phone. But even still, it does not pacify the terror. I will fall asleep for roughly 20 minutes before I jolt up out of bed, hyperventilating, breathing heavily. The reason why this happens every night is that every night as I drift off into sleep, one thought fires into my brain, screaming to me, in one split second

 "YOU ARE GOING TO DIE"

I don't hear those exact words. It's more of a realization... a reminder... a memory. I don't hear those exact words because they don't have to be spoken. 

I just know.

As of late, my fear has been extremely strong. 

 To keep myself in a healthy mental state, I like to take walks and enjoy fresh air, and that is just what I did today. As I walk down the sidewalk, I thought of everything in the present moment that makes life worth living. I thought about my wife to be and how happy I get when she expresses her excitement for our future wedding. I thought about how she makes me smile, how her laugh is so goofy and how funny her sense of humor is. I thought about our endeavors ahead, such as the new house we are buying. And suddenly, while I was walking down this beautiful sidewalk on a Serene autumn day, a terrifying thought inhabited my mind in one split second: 

"YOU ARE GOING TO DIE!"

The same realization I have every night as I drift to sleep, but this time it happened on a serene day while I was enjoying the fresh air . This time, it hit me a lot harder. I was by myself on that sidewalk and I began to cry. This was merely one hour ago. I came home, and decided to write because that is what makes me feel whole again. 

When I write, I feel that even after I pass on, my thoughts can live on which is why I calm down when I am writing.

Another thing that seems to marginally pacify my intense feelings of terror is my soon to be marriage. I feel that starting a family and having a legacy softens the blow of the inevitability of death.

On occasion I wonder if it is death that is to fear or dying alone... dying forgotten... dying unloved.

Could it be that no one ever fully comes to terms with their own mortality, but some find the blow softened when they have lived a life full of love and fulfillment?

I don't have the answer to that yet. All I know is that I have struggled with this for 21 years and I still have a few decades to go. 

And I know that while I am here, I might as well make the best of it, because I only get one try at this.