I recently discovered death

Story from a PsychAlive Member.

I recently discovered death.  Of course I have known about it for most of my life, but never really felt what it means.  When I first knew it as a child, I thought it would be a relief to be dead. A relief to stop the turmoil I felt. As a teenager, I faced it as a way to get back at my family.  “If I kill myself, they will finally feel something towards me, they will be sorry. They will be miserable and guilty.” As a young adult, death was a macho challenge.  “I’m not afraid of death, I want to find out what happens, I’m not scared. I will do anything I want, I will put myself in the most dangerous, the most scary situations that I can think of, because nothing can touch me, and if it does, at least I will go out with a bang. I will win because I have no fear.”

Then, after 22 years of living a new life, of learning how to be attached to people and to myself, a close friend died. I have realized through this that I don’t want to die. I love this opportunity I have to be alive.  I am so lucky that my youthful, “free-spirited” and yet incredibly self-destructive adventures did not kill me.  I miss my friend deeply, and feel waves of sadness come over me at different times when I am reminded of him. I realize that I am afraid because he is gone, forever.  It is the forever that scares me.  I cannot really understand that word, forever. He is gone, forever. I can understand gone for a while, but not for forever. I don’t want to disappear forever. I love being here now; I want to make each moment count, now.  I don’t have time to waste.  My friend didn’t either,

I would rather live life knowing the full torment of death, because I feel the importance of every minute of my life. There is nothing exciting about death, it is final, it is complete and there is no return. It is an agonizing truth to me.  But, right now, I am alive, and I want to give and take, love and laugh, cry and experience as much as I can in this life now. my life.