Ever since I was a child I was afraid of getting older and dying. It has been in the back of my mind for most of my life.
I had phases were this fear was not really around and then phases where it is the only thing I can think of. Ever since Corona it has gotten worse and worse. It just struck me one day while playing video games with my friends. Suddenly I was like “I WILL die one day. I will not be anymore … forever. I won’t even know that I am not anymore.” and I broke down pretty much immediately.
What followed was a phase of everlasting fear and anxiety. It was so bad that I just couldn’t fall asleep unless I watched comedy until was physically not able to stay awake. Back then I thought it was a result of the isolation of Corona. Since then I moved back in with my mother (due to different reasons). Everything was fine for a while but now it is back.
I should be happy. I handed in my bachelor’s thesis a while back, will soon move out again and have gotten a job in my dream career. I finished my therapy and while I am still not completely over my social anxiety but it is getting better and better. And yet the fear was never as bad. Last night I cowered into a ball under my desk and started crying.
It has gotten to a point were I thought about killing myself to end it. It is the same result either way. I won’t remember anything anyway. Even the pain and grief friends and family would feel is only temporary. They too will be gone with everything that made them up one day.
I have no intentions of going through with it but it frightens me that I even think like this.
I don’t know were this is coming from. Maybe from the feeling that I am wasting my life, that I am a failure and too far behind peers, that I am too old to have so little but I also know that it’s not like I could have done a lot better. Due to circumstances outside of my own control I am were I am right now but I am doing my best to get better. It’s just that it takes a lot of time and I fear that it takes too much time. I also lost a good friend recently so this probably plays into it as well.
Is there anyway of changing my way of thinking about death? I know I can’t change the fact that I will die but how can I accept it without falling into existential nihilism like I currently am?
Edit: I also already called my therapist but since it’s the weekend they won’t answer before Monday.
Death doesn’t much concern me, I sometimes ponder it but never really have crippling anxiety over. Unfortunately that’s been replaced by another anxiety. The fear that no matter what the proletariat do, the ruling class will simply win next time again. I fear that all the great progress we’ve made in these last years will be tarnished in a cruel replication of the 1980s collapse of the left-wing movements. But I know this will not happen, we will learn, we will evolve, and we will prepare, and we will finally be liberated.
If I die for a good and just cause such as building up the revolution to free the misery of others, then I’ll be content with it. But it if was for naught, well I would continue to live to spite the ruling parasites, but I would see humanity refusing to evolve past its current stage of development, this is what I greatly fear.
As if right now I’m playing through disco Elysium, and one of the paths is Harry becoming a communist. He abandons alcohol, and takes up organizing, but in truth he simply replaced an addiction for substances, for an addiction to liberation. That’s how I operate within this capitalist inhumane system, replace your rage, anxiety and aspirations for the liberation of this evil system.
You are a comrade, You see the true injustices of this system, it isolates and oppresses those who do not fall under its drunk inducing propaganda. And to lose someone like you, we will all lose the potential successes of your talent in our collective liberation, contact your local socialist organisation, be it the CPUSA or similar, and begin organising, and in the future, look back and be proud of the millions you helped in achieving our struggle.
This is only coming from me, as I found that my passion belonged to the communist movement. If this does not work do not worry! It just means you’ve yet to find your passion. You’re never too old to find talent, or meaning, never, we humans change throughout our lives. We will all fix our problems collectively.